Whether you consider yourself an average joe, a weekend warrior, or a restless recovery case, sports therapy can help. Sports Physical Therapy isn’t just for parents with injured athletes or adults who run marathons every weekend. Sportsmed PT is about more effective exercising and stretching, increased mobility, and pain-free activity. Whether you love rock climbing, swimming, running, playing basketball, or all of the above, this type of therapy can help you stay active for the long haul. Why Does Sports Physical Therapy Matter? Sports therapy matters because you have goals and aspirations that require you to stay healthy. Whether your sport is super competitive or as casual as they come, to reach your individual milestones, you need to treat your body well. When you have a tightness or a nagging pain, ignoring it can end up ruining your plans. Derailment from your physical goals can also cause you to be less productive at work, less social, and more irritable. Addressing discomforts with a professional PT or sports therapist rather than letting them build up can keep you at your highest performance both within your sport and throughout the rest of your day-to-day life. Sportsmed physical therapy can increase circulation and mobility, and offer pain-free activity. It can also utilize more advanced strategies of improving your overall wellness and strength such as dry needling and cold laser therapy. These types of treatments cannot be performed at home and can help get you or your child get back on the field in less time than you were imagining. Increased Circulation Physical therapy for athletes can often include soft tissue mobilization, which is a form of massage using specifically designed tools to stimulate underlying tissues. These underlying tissues can include muscles, nerves, and scar tissue. This stimulation increases circulation, allowing more effective exercising and stretching. Contrary to popular belief, this type of sports therapy is not only utilized after an injury but can help to prevent future injuries and keep your body in top shape before activity. Increased Mobility One of the most popular types of sports therapy solutions includes therapeutic exercise. A physiotherapist can specifically design exercise routines for you, that when performed consistently, can be a form of medicine for the body. If prescribed skillfully, athletic physical therapy exercises can be used to not only strengthen weak parts of the body but also increase overall mobility that can positively affect the way you perform. When exercises are used the right way, they can also re-train muscles, increase productivity, and boost your mood. Spine and Sport Physical Therapy If your daily activity is stifled by a desk job or working on a computer during most of your day, you have probably experienced discomfort in your neck, shoulders, and back. To alleviate that discomfort, spine and sport physical therapy is a form of relief for neck pain, back pain, as well as other types of pain. A common solution to some of these issues is the use of spinal manipulation by an experienced physical therapist. This treatment involves the quick movement of spinal joints, readjusting them into a more comfortable position and releasing pressure between vertebrae. This physiological change often provides instant improvement in mobility and comfort. Sport specific physiotherapy combined with therapeutic exercises can provide longer periods of pain-free activity. There’s More . . . One of the most advanced and noninvasive treatments in physical therapy for athletes today is shockwave therapy. This treatment works by introducing high energy sound waves into painful parts of the body. Shockwave therapy enhances blood circulation to regenerate damaged tissue. Actual improvement can be seen with an ultrasound that shows larger blood vessels for more blood flow. Beneficial effects such as thinning of fascia tissue to eliminate tightness can be felt after only one or two treatments. This is an incredible strategy for kickstarting quick recovery for those that want to get back to their active lifestyle as soon as possible. The Best Part Sports physical therapy can help you increase mobility range, perform at your best consistently by reducing inflammation and pain, and decrease downtime because of pain or injury. For those in the Orem, Utah area, looking for preventative therapy, strengthening exercises or quick recovery, Strong Life Physiotherapy offers all types of spine and sports physical therapy for athletes. We know what it's like to want to perform your best at every workout, practice, or game, and unforeseen injuries can really get in the way of that. Let our knowledgeable physical therapist help create a plan that's right for you. Schedule your appointment today for any sort of sports or other physical therapy services in Orem, UT to help you stay healthy, active, and pain-free!
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Hand and wrist injuries happen and when they do it can really throw a wrench in your normal daily life. Things that you used to be able to do with ease are suddenly difficult and sometimes impossible to do without causing pain. Wrist and hand physical therapy, when utilized correctly, can be monumental in recovery. This includes both professional guidance and some self-motivated work on your end. Luckily, there are a few simple ‘do it yourself’ at-home remedies for wrist and hand injuries that you can do to help ease the pain and strengthen the area of your discomfort. Follow These Wrist and Hand Physical Therapy Techniques At Home: Ice and Heat It’s important to use ice and heat on your injured area but it’s equally important to know which one to use and when. Ice should be used if your injured area is feeling swollen. You can use gel packs that go in the freezer or just toss some ice cubes in a bag and wrap a towel around it. The ice will help reduce the swelling and eventually provide you with better motion in your wrist and hand. However, if your area of injury is feeling stiff and achy, a heat treatment may be a better option. The heat can help increase blood flow and loosen joints to give you a better range of motion. You can use a bucket of warm water, heat up a damp towel in the microwave or use a heating pad to help the area of injury. Rest is Necessary Remember, rest is just as important as exercising your injured area. You are allowed to take a break especially if your hand or wrist is causing you pain. Unfortunately with injuries, you aren’t able to do everything you are used to doing so it’s important to slow down and take it easy for a little bit to ensure you have the quickest recovery. Don’t be afraid to ask for help with certain tasks that are difficult due to your injury. Trying to do it yourself could cause you more pain and potentially reinjure the area, thus taking it longer to heal. Hand And Wrist Exercises Here are two simple PT exercises you can do at home to help strengthen your injured area: Wrist extension
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Wrist And Hand Specialized Physical Therapy While it’s great to do what you can to strengthen your injury at home, it’s important to talk with your physical therapist to determine what is best for your specific injury. Professionals will be able to help you know what you need to do in order to get back to feeling great. At Strong Life Physical Therapy in Orem, UT, experts provide hands on physical therapy by using great tools to help speed up the recovery process such as dry needling, shock wave therapy, cold laser therapy and so much more than you are able to do at home. At-home remedies are great to help strengthen an injured area, however, nothing will help you heal quicker than specialized physical therapy. It’s always advised to talk with your doctor before performing any exercise on an injured area, that’s why visiting your physical therapy doctor is so important. Schedule an appointment with StrongLife today at our Orem, Utah office to start your path to recovery with wrist and hand therapy techniques. Schedule a Free Visit
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AJ Ludlow, DPTDoctor of Physical Therapy, serving the Provo/Orem area. Archives
July 2019
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