
Maybe you’ve heard of this before, maybe not… Are you moving away from pain or towards pleasure?
There are countless people who experience pain and just deal with it and never seek help. They may have felt pain for a long time, and have just accepted it at some point. The problem with this is that while pain may be both natural and inevitable to experience at some point, feeling pain all of the time is not normal. More importantly, there is actually something you can do about it. A newer concept is “Know pain, no pain.” The challenge is if you have tried in the past to no avail, the push to get out of pain starts to dwindle.
This is where Physical Therapy comes into play. A Doctor of Physical Therapy is the number one option to get you out of pain and back to the activities you love to do with the people you love to do them with regularly. When you spend quality time with a physical therapist, and actually get your concerns, questions, and movement dysfunctions addressed, the pain goes away and you get to go back to living a more active lifestyle.
People tend to think that going to Physical Therapy is just for someone who is in debilitating pain or coming off a surgery, but really Physical Therapy can have more than one purpose in your daily life. Whether you feel some aches and pains or tightness, have an old injury, or have overall taken time away from physical activity and exercise, Physical Therapy is a great starting point to get you to the next level.
This is even more so true for people who live active lifestyles. If you’re someone who likes to push the limit on the weekends with pick up soccer matches, training for a 5K in Tamaques Park, or trying to crush it in group fitness classes, chances are you probably need Physical Therapy. Maybe you are not even in pain right now, but you want to continue to leading and living the active lifestyle you are, having a Physical Therapist on your side is the key to doing what you love at a high level.
At Amplify Physical Therapy & Performance, it’s always my goal to be progressive and help active adults and athletes do what they love, and do it better.
In this article, I’ll be covering why Physical Therapy is so important, how it can add to your current physical health and wellness routines, and the different modalities I use to set AmplifyPTP apart, and more importantly how to get patients results quickly. If you’re an active adult or athlete, and are currently dealing with an injury or simply don’t want to lose your active lifestyle and be sidelined, this is for you.
What is Physical Therapy, and why does it matter?
Physical therapy exists to diminish physical limitations, disuse, and dysfunction, and to promote, maintain, or restore physical health through physical examination, diagnosis, prognosis, patient education, physical intervention, rehabilitation, disease prevention, and health promotion.
Essentially, a Physical Therapist is an expert on the body, how it moves, and understands how to create a plan of care when someone gets injured. In the past, people would go to Physical Therapy if their physician told them to, and certainly if they were post-operation they would be prescribed Physical Therapy.
While this is great, this is also a bit old school. At AmplifyPTP, the format is to address your current symptoms with a 3-step process: Ease the Ache, Address the Root Cause, and Amplify Your Movement. Every appointment is one hour and directly one-on-one with a Doctor of Physical Therapy. The process starts with a robust evaluation and initial examination to get a better understanding of you, your symptoms, and what you are truly working towards. Once we establish the groundwork for your symptoms, the plan of care gets set into motion. The primary goal is to provide you clarity with your plan of care and treatment, and patient education starting on day one.
After a few sessions, you start to move better and feel better, which allows us to push your plan forward so you can do more of the activities you love. The next phase of the AmplifyPTP process is to address the root cause of why you initially felt symptoms. Maybe it’s due to tightness or weakness, a pinched nerve, or maybe it’s due to mechanical or structural inefficiencies. Whatever the root cause is we will help you figure it out without the guesswork.
Lastly, in order to ensure that you can keep moving well and into the right direction, your program will switch gears into amplifying your movement, which basically means that you are learning techniques and tools along the way so that you can help yourself. There is nothing more important than health. So, investing in making sure that you body can move well and move often is the underlying goal.
What Does a Physical Therapist Do?
In short, a Physical Therapist evaluates your pain and movement, figures out what’s causing the pain, guides you to make your movement better and your pain eliminate, and coaches you to strengthen your body to become more and more resilient.
I would absolutely love it if I can make your pain go away on day one. A Physical Therapist uses a constant process of assessing and re-assessing in order to move your plan of care forward. At AmplifyPTP, you will be fully evaluated and examined so that a robust overview of your movement, symptoms, past medical history and conditions, and goals are understood. After your initial evaluation, there is no question as to what’s feeding into your symptoms or movement dysfunctions. Next up comes the the actual treatment and coaching.
How does a Physical Therapist structure a session?
After the evaluation gives insights into you, the actual treatment needs to start. This is where the clinical reasoning of the Physical Therapist comes into play. A Physical Therapist has a lot of different tools they can use to address the root causes of the pain or dysfunction. At AmplifyPTP, I like to use a mix of manual therapy—joint mobilizations and spinal manipulation, cupping, and dry needling—coupled with neuro drills, exercise, and patient education to get results as quickly as possible.
Depending upon your progress within your plan of care, each session may look slightly different but the overarching focus in every session is to get you more towards your goals. Often, patients will think that being pain-free is the absolute goal, when in reality it is building resilience and being able to improve your capacity.
Who Does a Physical Therapist work with?
If you have a body, a Physical Therapist can work with you.
I see a lot of patients for lower back pain. In fact, at least 80% of the population will have a bout of low back pain at least once in their lifetime. That’s way too many people, especially if they are just trying to deal with it rather than address it.
At AmplifyPTP, I primarily treat active adults and athletes who work hard during their fitness and recreation activities. I see a lot of runners with knee or foot pain, neck and shoulder pain, and hip tightness from sitting during the work day.
The biggest thing to know about how AmplifyPTP operates though is that you don’t need to be in pain to come into the clinic. In fact, I have plenty of patients who come to get their musculoskeletal aches and tightness from their sport or activities addressed so they can continue to perform in the gym or on the road or the field. You can think of AmplifyPTP as your physical health quarterback, so if you have something that just doesn’t feel right, but isn’t stopping you from your movement or sport, you have a qualified movement professional on your physical health team.
The Benefits vs Drawbacks of Physical Therapy
The healthcare system is wild. Big insurance companies rule the world it seems and the healthcare providers within the system have to bend and bow down to a lot that gets dictated by insurance. Insurance-based clinics also dominate the market, and due to poor reimbursements they need to have a high-volume of patients. Unfortunately, because of this the provider-patient interaction gets negatively impacted—you only spend 10-15 minutes with your Physical Therapist, which in turn can slow down your recovery time. This means you actually end up spending weeks more going to PT, and consequently more money in copays than some direct pay options, plus the drive times to and from the clinic multiple times a week.
A lot of clinics are also stuck in the past with some of the ways they go about treating. Passive modalities like icing, heat packs, or setting them up on ultrasound are still the main forms of treatment, and that simply does not cut it anymore. Studies have shown that passive modalities and approach do not work nearly as well as active inputs like strength, motor control, and mind-muscle connection.
At AmplifyPTP, you will never be treated like a number who gets the same exercise paper sheet as every other patient dealing with a similar type of issue. Your plan of care is truly catered to your goals. Each of your sessions will be spent one-on-one with a Doctor of Physical Therapy for 60 minutes because, quite honestly, you deserve that in your healing process and results matter.
Key Takeaways
If I can leave you with a few thoughts it’s that Physical Therapy can be for everyone who wants to move better, feel better, and perform better. Your health is the biggest priority that we can help positively impact. Physical Therapy is not just for people who are coming off of surgery. Physical Therapy should be used to keep your fitness program on the right track and not get sidelined. Most people want to do what they love forever, but let age or injury get in the way. At AmplifyPTP, the goal is to always provide you the guidance and coaching you need in order to live an active and fulfilling life.
Interested in learning more? I’d love to have you stop by or set up a free 15-minute phone call with me to learn more about what AmplifyPTP does differently.
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