Physical therapy is oftentimes considered a rehabilitative therapy, and that makes sense because many people seek out a physical therapist’s help after an injury or while they are working to recover after surgery. However, an oft-overlooked aspect of physical therapy is how the service can be so preventative in nature.
As we always say in healthcare, prevention is much preferred to treatment. We’ll happily help you recover after a torn Achilles or a shoulder dislocation, but we’d much rather help you prevent these conditions from developing in the first place so that you don’t have to spend time and money on rehab. With that in mind, we want to explore how physical therapy can be so beneficial for preventing injuries.
PT For Injury Prevention
Whether you want to make sure that you stay healthy for your senior season or you want to reduce your fall risk so that you can continue to stay active during your retirement years, we can help. Here’s how we can help keep injuries from slowing you down.
- Goal-Specific Exercises– We can help you stay healthy and avoid injuries by developing a goal-specific exercise routine. As we tell all of our clients, no two rehab programs are exactly the same. We want to tailor your injury prevention or strength training program to your specific capabilities and goals. Let us design a PT program suited to your individual goals so that your body is preparing for the specific movement patterns or activities you’ll be pursuing.
- Slow And Steady– Another key to injury prevention is slowly taking on greater physical challenges. If you take on too much stress too early on in the process, you risk developing an overstress injury. We can help you gradually take on greater physical challenges without increasing your risk of an overstress injury, which is the most common type of injury that affects athletes and active individuals.
- Preseason Preparedness– Injuries oftentimes occur early in the season when the athlete goes from limited activity to a lot of sport-specific exercises and training. Let us help you prepare for this sport-specific activity ahead of time so that it’s not such a shock to the system when the season gets underway. Preseason training will not only reduce your risk of an in-season injury, but it can also give you a leg up on the competition whose endurance and conditioning may be lacking.
- Enhanced Recovery– We also teach clients how to recover faster from the rigors of physical activity. Rest is helpful for your body after strenuous activity, but there’s more that goes into recovery than rest alone. We can teach you how to fuel your body with the right nutrients and provide the right environment for tissue healing to take place. Helping you overcome general soreness that you might experience after activity can keep muscles and other soft tissues functioning properly, which is key to injury prevention.
- Form Analysis and Correction– We have a number of tools at our disposal to assess your athletic form or your walking patterns to look for inefficiencies or possible issues that may be exposing you to an increased injury risk. We can break down your form or your stride frame by frame and teach you how to make minor adjustments to improve how stress is dispersed throughout your body so that your form isn’t putting you at risk of an injury.
Prevention is preferred to treatment, but we’re here in whatever capacity you need us. Don’t wait until an injury strikes to become the strongest version of yourself through physical therapy. Take your athletic performance to the next level or simply remain confident in your physical capabilities by working with a PT to decrease your injury risk. For more information, or for help with a different physical issue, reach out to the team at OrthoRehab Specialists today at (612) 339-2041.
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