Injuries are bound to happen, whether you’re an athlete or not. Getting hurt can cause you to miss out on work and, sometimes, life. Physical therapy can help you heal after an injury — and help you avoid injury in the first place.
At SportsMED Orthopedic Surgery & Spine Center, our goal is to help you get back on your feet as soon as possible. Along with many other treatment options, we offer physical therapy as a treatment — and prevention — option for you.
Our team of doctors gets you the treatment you need to keep up with your busy life.
What is physical therapy?
Physical therapy is an aspect of physical medicine that focuses on getting your body back to its normal condition after surgery or an injury. It’s a versatile treatment because it can help improve a variety of medical problems. Reasons that you may need physical therapy include:
- Managing chronic pain
- Improving balance
- Preventing falls and injury
- Recovering from surgery
- Improving mobility
Our physical therapists use a variety of exercises to help you gain strength and mobility after an injury, or improve on coordination and balance to boost your performance. Exercises you can expect to do in your therapy sessions include:
- Low-impact aerobics
- Strength training
- Stretching for flexibility
- Pain relief exercises
Therapy can be challenging for many people, and you may be a little bit sore in the days following your treatment. This is normal. You may be exercising muscles that haven’t been used in a while or, due to injury or surgery, have been hurt.
At SportsMED, our doctors work closely with our physical therapists and other members of the team to help facilitate a comprehensive treatment plan to get you the results you’re looking for.
Preventing injuries with physical therapy
Although physical therapy is most commonly known for its use in surgical rehab and post-injury care, its versatility ranges well beyond that. If you’re an athlete, taking part in a preventive therapy program can help you train your body to keep you from getting hurt.
Preventive physical therapy offers many approaches to keeping your body in tip-top shape. Some of the ways our therapists can help you prevent injury include:
- Improving stability
- Improving balance
- Teaching proper technique
- Teaching warmup and cool-down exercises
- Learning how to move properly
- Working on muscle strength and alignment
Even if you’re an athlete, you might not be as focused on proper body mechanics as you should be. This is vital to keeping yourself in the game and free from injury pain.
That’s where physical therapy can help you. By learning proper techniques and conditioning your muscles and ligaments, your chances of getting hurt dwindle with each therapy session.
Your body doesn’t just need conditioning and consistent exercise to be at its best. Another way our therapists help you keep your body healthy is by taking care of your muscles, ligaments, and tendons. We achieve this using techniques such as:
- Massage
- Ultrasound therapy
- Heat and ice
- Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) units
These treatments help your muscles and other tissues relax after you’ve worked hard to keep your body in proper shape and alignment. They can also stimulate blood flow to your muscles, promoting faster healing and, ultimately, recovery.
By getting into our physical therapy program sooner rather than later, you increase your chances of being injury-free in the future, whether it’s in sports or life in general.
When you’re ready to give physical therapy a try, call us at one of our four convenient locations in Huntsville, Madison, Athens, and Decatur, Alabama, or you can request an appointment using our online booking tool.