What are the benefits of physical therapy?

Physical Therapy Umbrella

Physical therapy is aimed at promoting, maintaining, and restoring health through many different facets. One of the main goals of physical therapy is to restore function but also maintain the function gained to move more freely with less chance of re-injury and less pain. Other important goals of PT are to improve mobility, and quality of movement and to prevent injury. This is attained by utilizing interventions such as therapeutic exercise and manual therapy.

Therapeutic Exercise

Therapeutic exercises are prescribed by a PT and involve movement targeting specific muscles with the goal of restoring muscular strength, function, and well-being. Therapeutic exercises are very intentional as they relate to a specific individual’s dysfunction and are not the same for everyone.

Manual Therapy

Manual therapy is the use of many different interventions including joint mobilizations, soft tissue massage, dry needling, muscle energy techniques, passive stretching, and an array of other strategies that work to improve joint function, joint range of motion, muscle tightness, and malalignments.

Techniques

The combination of these techniques works to restore the function of the body to elicit decreased pain for one to participate in their desired activities. Physical therapy can be of benefit to many individuals whether you have a chronic injury such as low back pain or any acute conditions such as an ankle sprain. Physical therapy is very important for individuals with either condition, acute or chronic, to improve overall function and pain to return to previous activities safely and with a decreased risk of future injury.