Injury Prevention vs. Being Injured: How Physical Therapy Helps
While many people think of visiting a physical therapist as rehabilitation or someone to help recover from injuries, many PTs have patients who see them when they’re not injured.
Using Physical Therapy to Recover from Injuries
As PT’s we are trained to help people recover from injuries, joint replacements, or adjust to chronic conditions. Physical Therapy helps restore proper movement in addition to avoiding future injury. From exercises that strengthen muscles to improving mobility and alignment to restore physical function. Patients who are recovering are often referred by surgeons or in some cases a physician.
For recovery purposes, because PTs use a variety of techniques, exercises, and modalities, these can be used to help alleviate pain from an injury or if you’re rehabbing after surgery.
In addition to helping injury recovery, PT’s can help speed up that recovery process! Your plan will be customized to you, and your specific needs including a home exercise program so you can get back to your normal activities as quickly as possible.
Physical Therapy to Prevent Injuries
If you want to keep your body functioning properly or are trying to keep up your level of activity, some manual therapy, or an exercise program from a PT to help with mobility can help you prevent any injuries.
Preventative physical therapy appointments can help you be proactive about identifying underlying dysfunctions, muscle imbalances, or tightnesses that you may not necessarily consider pain. This might include proactive strength or balance training to help you keep up with your activity level. Here at Custom Care Rehab, we utilize a whole-body approach to help our patients reach their goals - whether healing or just improving capacity for daily activities.
Using physical therapy to improve your athletic performance can be extremely beneficial! Not only can a PT help incorporate proper warm-ups, we emphasize body mechanics and sport-specific movements (such as shoulders in tennis). Our stretch and release program is great for this, as is our Tennis Tune-up Program.
If you’ve only considered physical therapy as rehabilitation, consider how you can utilize PT to keep your body functioning on all cylinders, so you can keep up with the activities that you love doing. If you’re interested in learning how we can help you, contact us for a consultation.
