How is physical therapy useful after a sports injury?
Physical therapy after a sports injury is going to help you restore your ability to accomplish that particular sport that you participated in. They're going to get you back to your sport. And the way they're going to do that is they're going to restore your physical abilities and then evaluate what's necessary for you to perform a particular sport, re-teach you the components of that particular sport, and then put it all together in the environment of the sport and help you restore your ability to perform that particular sport or activity. A common sport injury that we see is rotator cuff tendonitises that you can see commonly in a baseball pitcher. They develop this painful condition and a tendonitis within their shoulder that limits their ability to throw the ball. A physical therapist would evaluate the particular pain component of that and then work with modalities such as ultrasound and ice packs and particular exercise program to restore the normal functioning in the rotator cuff as well as treat the pain. Once the pain is gone and the pitcher is able to move their arm through that range of motion without pain, then we're going to take a look at why that problem was caused in the first place. Sometimes it might be lower extremity weakness so the physical therapist is going to make sure that their base of support from which they are throwing is strong enough to support the tremendous pressures that are being transmitted through their shoulder. So part of the physical therapy program may be a strengthening exercises, strengthening their leg exercises or their trunk, so they have a stronger base of support, treat the rotator cuff problem in the shoulder with pain and exercises and the shoulder and get their strength back in their arm and then put it all together and have them actually start pitching again to make sure that they have the strength, the range of motion, they're pain-free and they're able to go back to pitching and not develop the problem again.
