Sports Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation
Athletes push their bodies to the limits during competitive performances. While our bodies are being physically tested and the boundaries are being tested to produce our best performance, sometimes, there is a risk of injury. The higher the intensity of the activity, the higher the chance of injury. If our tissues are not ready for the requirements that get placed on them during these physical tasks, there is a chance that a muscle, ligament, tendon, bone or other injury occurs. For anyone who has ever played sports, they have probably experienced some level of injury. Sports physical therapy is extremely crucial in the rehabilitation of athletes getting back to peak performance levels. When an athlete gets injured, they need tailored treatment to rehab them back to their sport with emphasis on avoiding re-injury.
Role of Sports Physical Therapy
To rehabilitate an athlete, the focus is on identifying the injured tissue and guiding it through stages of healing to restore proper function, increase load tolerance, and ultimately enable a return to full sports activities. Here at Symmetry Physical Therapy, we complete that by tailoring a rehab protocol specific to your body’s needs and requirements demanded by the sport. Everyone needs rehabilitation and a proper treatment program to achieve those goals, whether it be a weekend warrior, someone looking to get into a sport or high-level professional athlete. We provide manual therapy, strengthening exercises, return to sport exercises and everything in-between to not only rehabilitate your current injury but to decrease the risks of injuries in the future.
The Rehab Process for Athletes
After assessing the injury and the athlete as a whole to ensure that we find the root of the problem or the specific tissue injury, the physical therapists at Symmetry Physical Therapy in the Downtown Miami/Brickell area will then provide you with an individualized treatment approach consisting of manual therapy, flexibility, mobility, strengthening and return to sport protocols. As a 1-on-1 patient-to-therapist clinic, we have your complete undivided attention to improving you back to the level you want. Depending on your injury and sport, the therapist will make a plan which introduces most, if not all of the characteristics mentioned above.
What Does Physical Therapy Look Like for an athlete?
Top-of-the-line treatment with up-to-date research on the best methods of treatment is provided here at Symmetry. Manual therapy is provided including soft tissue mobilization, techniques such as cupping, graston or scraping, dry needling with electrical stimulation, and joint mobilizations. These techniques promote the improvement of a variety of factors in injuries including improved blood flow, decreased tissue tension, and proper alignment of bones/tendons and muscle fibers necessary for the overall benefit of improved healing times. With manual therapy improving all these factors, it allows you to start the next phase of rehab faster and with improved results.
Following manual therapy, we will begin to introduce rehabilitative and therapeutic exercises meant to improve the activation and stabilization of these muscles and other tissues necessary for setting a solid foundation for further strengthening. After this, we would get ready to improve strength, power, explosiveness, force absorption/production, and specific sports qualities such as change of direction, acceleration/deceleration, agility or anything needed for your sports.
Exercising in Sports Rehabilitation
In physical therapy for sports rehabilitation, there is a pathway that all athletes must follow to fully return to sport and avoid injury. As mentioned before, there are levels that the athlete must progress through to complete recovery. Progressive overload is the best way to understand this concept and framework.
Progressive overload is safely increasing the amount of load applied to a certain tissue to increase tensile strength and allow for progressions from low-level activation exercises all the way to return to sport training. The concept of progressive overload exposes tissues to a specific level of stimuli, allowing them to adapt before advancing to the next level of stimulus. This allows the tissue to fortify and avoid setback injuries. As you complete these exercises with the guidelines of progressive overload, you progress through the stages of activation, strengthening, and force production.
As the patient works on these attributes and achieves their goals, they can now progress into higher-level activities like plyometrics, change of direction, and acceleration/deceleration exercises, which are the backbone of sports. Plyometrics which require a fast forceful production of force followed by a controlled landing phase. Cutting and change of directions requires strength and stability gained in previous stages of rehab, coupled with a coordinated movement into the desired direction. You need to work on all these higher-level sport qualities after establishing the foundational movements in the early stages of physical rehabilitation.
Dry Needling in Sports Rehabilitation
Dry Needling is a treatment used in physical therapy to assist in the healing of tissues and the removal of increased inflammation of the injured area. The treatment, combined with electrical stimulation (E-stim), boosts the body’s opioid production, blocks pain in tissues, increases blood flow, and clears byproducts and waste from affected tissues. Any trigger points in muscles and tendons of the shoulders can also lead to improper movement patterns and affect you in sports activities. Dry needling can help to release the acetylcholine trapped in trigger points to allow for optimal movements of muscles. Overall, dry needling serves as a highly effective strategy for returning to sport after any musculoskeletal injury.
WinBack Tecar Therapy for Sports Injuries
Winback TeCar Therapy uses currents of electricity to speed up your body’s own natural healing process and can help you recover faster from sports injuries. Here’s how Winback TeCar therapy can help in your specific sport injuries:
- Increased blood circulation: It boosts blood flow to the injured area, bringing more oxygen and nutrients while removing waste products, which helps in healing.
- Pain relief: Tecar therapy eases pain associated with sports injuries by increasing blood flow and relaxing muscles, and helping to fix abnormal collagen and scar tissue with its heat.
- Reduced swelling: ISports injuries often cause swelling in muscles or within joints. Tecar therapy may help to reduce swelling and improve drainage of the affected area.
Combining Winback with dry needling can help you significantly enhance the healing process of your injury.
Why to Rehab From a Sports Injury?
If you participate in any sports, recreationally or professionally, you must take care of your body to allow for longevity and avoid serious injury. Whether you are already injured or looking for a way to get stronger and make your body resilient so you won’t get injured, physical therapy is the way. Rehabilitation for athletes is extremely important. A small injury can become something serious if you are overloading the tissues of your body which can lead to more time out of your sport. If you are dealing with an injury and are looking to rehab to return to sport, and are looking for a Physical Therapist, come see us at Symmetry Physical Therapy, located in the Downtown Miami/Brickell area, where we provide an in-depth assessment and treatment strategies so we can help you get back to normal
Feel free to give us a call at (305) 331 2277 to schedule an appointment.