Top Sports Physical Therapy Treatments To Help Get Your Injured Athletes Back in the Game

Athletic injuries are an unfortunate but also unavoidable part of playing sports. Everyone who plays competitively for long enough winds up with a few, and recovery from injury is a big part of learning to be an effective athlete. When injuries occur, physical therapy can be an effective tool for a fast recovery that avoids many of the common setbacks athletes encounter after an injury on the field.

Effective Physical Therapy Practices

Since physical therapy exercises are built around the patient’s specific needs, the right approach to treating athletic injuries will change situationally. There are some common parts of the body that are affected across many sports, however. Knee, hip, ankle, wrist, and shoulder injuries are the most common ones for athletes to encounter on the field. As a result, there are a lot of common and effective exercises for those parts of the body to help you rebuild overall strength, in addition to the targeted exercises for your injuries.

• Hip flexor stretches
• Knee extensions
• Burpees
• Lateral squats
• Side lunges

As you’ve probably noticed, many of the exercises used in injury recovery are also used in regular training, and there is a good reason for that. The two share many goals, with the big difference being that athletic physical therapy Northfield NJ focuses on rebuilding strength in key areas, whereas training focuses on improving it overall in ways that help you with key performance issues.

Boosting Recovery Time Significantly

Physical therapy can help speed up recovery time for athletes by providing individual attention and monitoring that gives athletes feedback while directing their efforts toward the most productive exercises for that phase of recovery. The results are better targeted, which helps you return to a healthy muscle balance faster than individual exercise programs without the additional input.

Physical therapy also provides the opportunity for forms of supervised training and strength building that might not be possible without it, and that also speeds up recovery. One good example is the use of aquatic therapy techniques for joint injuries. This includes atheltic injuries to the knee and hip. Aquatic physical therapy benefits from the buoyance and the resistance provided by water to speed up strength building without putting as much strain on the joints as exercise on dry land.

The final component to the faster recovery times provided by physical therapy Monroe NJ is the reduced risk of reinjury. It is easy to accidentally push too far if you are recovering alone or with a training program designed for athletes who are not injured. Your physical therapist is there to monitor your technique and your level of fatigue so you have an outside check on whether you are overdoing things, and that is a huge help too.

Finding Physical Therapy for Athletic Injuries

Post-injury physical therapy is very common, but athletes have different needs from people who are only seeking to regain the strength and range of movement needed for everyday chores and activity. If you need to find athletic physical therapy near me, it’s important to work with professionals who understand sports medicine so you can get the targeted advice that helps you most.