5 Tips for Keeping up with your Home Exercise Program

When you are are all done with your physical therapy sessions and feeling great, it is easy to fall back into old routines and forget to do some of the exercises that your Physical Therapist may have recommended. Here are 5 great tips for helping you continue to with your home exercise program (HEP) once you are at home on your own!

Tip #1

Build the exercises into your workout. You can use some of them as a warm-up or a cool down. Any stretches the PT has given you can be done at the end of your workout.

Tip #2

Make it a routine. Make sure you do your HEP at the same time everyday. Just like anything else you look to make a healthy habit, having it become part of your daily schedule will make it hard to forget to do.

Tip #3

Set reminders. Use an alarm, post-it notes or a reminder app on your phone. You may already use these things to help remind you to take a medication, make it to meetings or appointments on time, so why not use them to help you keep your body feeling great with a little reminder to do your HEP?

Tip #4

Don’t stop when the pain stops! These exercises are just as much preventative as they are rehabilitative, so even if you feel and move well, you need to keep up with your HEP to keep feeling that way. If you stop your exercises you are likely to let your body fall back into a state of dysfunctional movement or weakness that will bring the pain back.

Tip #5

Sign up with a Wellness Coach at Atlantic Physical Therapy Center and get the help you need to not only continue with your home exercise program, but progress your program when needed. Using a Wellness Coach like Laura Goldsmith can help you stay accountable for doing your exercises and help you when any questions or issues may arise. She is available for in person and tele-health style meetings making it super easy to make and keep your appointments when it is convenient for you.

Laura Goldsmith Wellness Coach Wellness Coaching

For more information on Laura’s services and Wellness Coaching visit atlanticptcenter.com/wellness-coaching

Call Us: 877-963-3378

2nd Chance – Lydia Gray’s story

“Lydia Gray is the definition of a hard worker. She is resilient, strong, intelligent and compassionate. She immigrated to the United States as a young girl in hopes of living the American dream. In March 5, 2020, Gray’s life changed forever.”

Read More Here

Watch Her Story Here!

Addressing Common Musculoskeletal Issues in Young Athletes

Addressing Common Musculoskeletal Issues in Young Athletes

“Mom, My Knee Hurts.” If your son or daughter is involved in sports, you have undoubtedly heard these words at one time or another. But how do you know if your child’s complaint is serious enough to warrant a trip to the doctor or a physical therapist? While many complaints may be transient such as soreness following a particularly intense practice if your child’s complaints are becoming more persistent or recurrent, it’s time to seek help. Often these recurrent pain complaints are the sign of an underlying musculoskeletal issue. Unless your child has suffered a sudden traumatic injury, most of these issues can be evaluated and addressed by a physical therapist. Physical therapists are uniquely qualified to diagnose and address musculoskeletal issues including muscular imbalances, weakness, tightness, and alignment issues both at the site of pain and in adjacent body areas. For example, that chronic recurrent knee pain may be the result of poor alignment at the foot and ankle. As your child lands on an unstable ankle this results in uneven forces acting on the knee. During the evaluation, your physical therapist will identify relevant musculoskeletal issues and then will initiate a custom training program to address them and to finally eliminate the pain once and for all.

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Myofascial Decompression or “Cupping” Technique by Mike Manzo

As physical therapists continue to learn more about the human body and consider more deeply the functional anatomy, new techniques emerge.  A new technique, employed by the PTs at Atlantic Physical Therapy Center is called Myofascial Decompression (MFD).  This technique is the blending of the ancient technique of “cupping” with principles of tissue mobilization and myofascial release.
The cups impart a distracting and decompressing force through the skin which is attached to deeper layers of tissue (fascia).  Using this technique, we can mobilize tissue in a unique way and gain stretch that we cannot achieve with standard methods.  Watch the video below which demonstrates and explains this technique further.

Kids in Sports

We are witnessing an unprecedented rise in youth sport overuse injuries.  We are seeing 12 year olds with overuse injuries that used to be reserved only for very high level college-aged and professional athletes.  We as parents, coaches and medical professionals helping these athletes, must guard against the urge to PUSH-PUSH-PUSH all the time.  Scheduled rest days are imperative.  Participating in other activities and sports outside of the “primary” sport is healthy.  Finally, we need to observe the athlete and LISTEN to them.  Many times, the child is less interested in the sport than the parent because it has become a job.  We are linking a great article below about constant training and overuse injuries. This article is written by an associate of ours, Dr. Kim Davis, founder and CEO of RunLab in Austin, Texas.  Injuries are part of the game… but overuse and repetitive injury doesn’t necessarily have to be when training is appropriate.

Kids In Sports Blog