Therapeutic Exercise
Therapeutic Exercise provides a multitude of benefits for anyone wishing to restore their strength, endurance, flexibility, or stability and return to optimal performance levels. The combination of strength and proper movement patterns is truly the long term solution for athletes. Our Physical Therapists work one-on-one with you to enable the performance of perfect form and repetition of quality movement patterns. We do not use a group exercise model at Fast Track.
What does therapeutic exercise do?
Your therapeutic exercise plan will be strategically based upon your impairments determined during your Sports Injury Evaluation. Targeted exercises are aimed at relieving pain, stabilizing your joints, improving muscle/ tendon integrity, and restoring you to your goal level of physical function.
There are a wide variety of therapeutic exercises and each one has a unique purpose. These include:
- Injury-Specific Corrective Exercises. Our physical therapists will create a program with strategic exercises to expedite your recovery. You will receive a home exercise program to accelerate progress and will work on advanced exercises during your appointment. Visual, tactile, and verbal cues will be given by your physical therapist to ensure the appropriate movement is being performed.
- Movement Retraining. Outside of trauma, athletes are MOST injured by poor movement patterns. For example, a runner that presents with an overstride, unstable pelvis, collapsed knees, or excessively pronated feet will inevitably have painful issues due to the abnormal stress of these alignments. Our Physical therapy team trains athletes to move BETTER than when they walked in our doors to not only fix injuries but also prevent reinjury.
- Sport-Specific Exercises. Our Sports Rehab Specialists provide guidance and cueing on exercises that are designed to carry over successfully to your sport. While foundational exercises are key for all athletes, we train based on the unique needs of your sport, ie running, jumping, cutting, twisting, kicking, throwing, etc.
- Balance & Proprioception Exercises. Single leg balance and proprioception is imperative for land athletes. Your body has mechanoreceptors in every joint that allows you to understand where you are in space and respond to outside forces, ie uneven ground, contact by another athlete, etc. You may have sufficient strength, but your body may not respond quickly enough. A great example is someone suffering from recurrent ankle sprains. Sports rehab works very effectively to stabilize your foot and ankle, as well as up the chain.
- Mobility Exercises. These exercises are aimed at increasing the range of motion in your joints and soft tissues. They are designed to help your joints move better, without pain from unnecessary compression. Proper mobility in restricted joints above and below an excessively (hyper) mobile joint is also imperative.
Relieving pain with therapeutic exercise:
It is a common misconception that one should constantly rest when they are in pain. REST NEVER WORKS TO COMPLETELY FIX AN INJURY. Sports injuries will typically return as rest can actually cause your muscles to weaken during the healing process, which can lead to decreased functionality and more pain in the long run.
Our Fairfax physical therapists are movement experts, trained in improving strength, proper movement patterns, mobility, and overall function of the body. At the Fast Track Sports Medicine & Performance Center, our goal is to help you live a pain-free life as a result of becoming stronger, faster, and better than you were before.. Give us a call at 703-237-3930 or schedule your consultation today to find out how therapeutic exercise can help you reach your physical goals and allow you to live the life you want!
