Keeping Yourself in Tune
Your Body is Your Vehicle for Experiencing Life
The human body is a machine, and ensuring all parts are working well individually and collectively is critical to its optimal performance. Most people don’t think twice about performing regular tune-ups on their vehicle, like changing the oil or rotating the tires. We like to think of these recommended practices as maintenance, but in actuality, the motive is prevention. By keeping your car running as healthy as possible, you’re doing what you can to prevent breakdown or failure within your vehicle’s thousands of moving parts.
Taking care of your body is very much like taking care of your car, but with two main exceptions:
- Unlike a car, you can’t buy a new body when yours fails!
- A ‘quick fix’ option can sometimes solve a car problem, but the same is not true for the human body. Research demonstrates that in many cases, the surgeries and medications people receive for pain and trauma are associated with dangerous risks and life-threatening side effects, and are often less effective than physical therapy and lifestyle changes in the long-term!
Efficient Movement as Medicine – The FMT Philosophy
Our goal is to assess your body’s mobility, strength, and movements to uncover any likely causes of future degeneration or injury. Our treatments for injury prevention include an in-depth analysis of your movement, hands-on treatment, education on body mechanics using CoreFirst® Strategies, and instruction on a highly-personalized exercise program to optimize function.
Most injuries can be prevented. Depending on your profession or lifestyle, how you move throughout the day will determine your risk of injury. Sometimes, it’s actually a very simple fix incorporated into your day-to-day that will not only prevent pain and injury, but also make major improvements in your overall health. The following are examples of pain-causing activities CFMTs often help patients to correct.
You spend a significant portion of your life sleeping. If you don’t wake up rested, rejuvenated and fresh, your body is trying to communicate to you that something needs to change. Advanced PT’s act as the interpreter, to uncover what your body is trying to tell you and empower you with tools to make lifelong changes so you can sleep more restfully and wake rejuvenating.
If you sit for long periods of time during the day, feel pain while sitting, or feel stiff when getting up from sitting, we will incorporate hands-on strategies and positional training to reduce and/or eliminate the pain or stiffness you experience. It is not uncommon for our PT’s to work with you on supportive, pain-alleviating strategies in your vehicle, or by incorporating videos/photos at your workplace, on the plane, and in the garden to help problem solve a solution based on your individual situation.
How do you feel getting out of a car? Increased pain while driving (or sitting on an airplane) is very common due to the poor ergonomic designs and safety requirements. We can assess your body in your car to give you specific suggestions on how to make you get out of a car ready to take on the world!
Does cleaning your house leave you feeling satisfied, or does your body feel defeated from the physicality of the chores? We can teach you body mechanics for lifting, vacuuming, making beds, and cleaning every sort of room in your house to help you keep your body feeling young and your house looking immaculate.
Our sport-specific FMT movement analyses and treatment strategies are uniquely designed for those who participate in highly competitive sports or have a very active physical life and do not wish to be impacted by injury. The highly-focused sports-specific training that athletes undergo often creates uneven tightness in certain muscle groups, strength imbalances, and decreased overall performance. CFMT’s assess & address sport & activity specific total body balance from left to right, front to back, upper to lower body to optimize performance while preventing injury.
If you are like most active American adults, then you fall in this category. Spending most of your day sedentary at work, you are forced to go out for an intense run/workout after work, or maybe worse, you squeeze in several hours of pickup basketball or training for that marathon only during the weekend. Problem is – most “warriors” don’t know there is a problem until there is a major one. Injury rates for the weekend warrior have been on the rise for two decades, but the cause of injury in this population is very seldom due to a collision or trauma. In fact, 70 – 80% of adult knee injuries are due to two factors: 1) Improper movement strategies or 2) Overtraining/Overspecialization creating the imbalance. At IPA Physio, our CFMT’s help prevents future pain and injuries by assessing the risks you face in sport and life, identifying areas of imbalance and movement restrictions and treating these potential weak links – building a more resilient body ready to take on the marathon of life.
- The Good News
-
Most injuries can be prevented. Depending on your profession or lifestyle, how you move throughout the day will determine your risk of injury. Sometimes, it’s actually a very simple fix incorporated into your day-to-day that will not only prevent pain and injury, but also make major improvements in your overall health. The following are examples of pain-causing activities CFMTs often help patients to correct.
- Sleeping
-
You spend a significant portion of your life sleeping. If you don’t wake up rested, rejuvenated and fresh, your body is trying to communicate to you that something needs to change. Advanced PT’s act as the interpreter, to uncover what your body is trying to tell you and empower you with tools to make lifelong changes so you can sleep more restfully and wake rejuvenating.
- Sitting
-
If you sit for long periods of time during the day, feel pain while sitting, or feel stiff when getting up from sitting, we will incorporate hands-on strategies and positional training to reduce and/or eliminate the pain or stiffness you experience. It is not uncommon for our PT’s to work with you on supportive, pain-alleviating strategies in your vehicle, or by incorporating videos/photos at your workplace, on the plane, and in the garden to help problem solve a solution based on your individual situation.
- Driving
-
How do you feel getting out of a car? Increased pain while driving (or sitting on an airplane) is very common due to the poor ergonomic designs and safety requirements. We can assess your body in your car to give you specific suggestions on how to make you get out of a car ready to take on the world!
- Housework
-
Does cleaning your house leave you feeling satisfied, or does your body feel defeated from the physicality of the chores? We can teach you body mechanics for lifting, vacuuming, making beds, and cleaning every sort of room in your house to help you keep your body feeling young and your house looking immaculate.
- Athletes
-
Our sport-specific FMT movement analyses and treatment strategies are uniquely designed for those who participate in highly competitive sports or have a very active physical life and do not wish to be impacted by injury. The highly-focused sports-specific training that athletes undergo often creates uneven tightness in certain muscle groups, strength imbalances, and decreased overall performance. CFMT’s assess & address sport & activity specific total body balance from left to right, front to back, upper to lower body to optimize performance while preventing injury.
- Active Adults
-
If you are like most active American adults, then you fall in this category. Spending most of your day sedentary at work, you are forced to go out for an intense run/workout after work, or maybe worse, you squeeze in several hours of pickup basketball or training for that marathon only during the weekend. Problem is – most “warriors” don’t know there is a problem until there is a major one. Injury rates for the weekend warrior have been on the rise for two decades, but the cause of injury in this population is very seldom due to a collision or trauma. In fact, 70 – 80% of adult knee injuries are due to two factors: 1) Improper movement strategies or 2) Overtraining/Overspecialization creating the imbalance. At IPA Physio, our CFMT’s help prevents future pain and injuries by assessing the risks you face in sport and life, identifying areas of imbalance and movement restrictions and treating these potential weak links – building a more resilient body ready to take on the marathon of life.
Don’t Go for the Quick Fix
Check out this article in Time Magazine article highlighting the failures of our “quick fix” culture including the currently devastating U.S. opioid epidemic. Dr. Machado, of the Cleveland Clinic, calls on our medical culture to no longer look first to drugs and other dangerous or non-proven approaches. He states that we must insist that physical therapy be the new integral component for treating/managing pain as the safe, sustainable and long-term solution to the problems our “quick-fix solutions” created!
Let’s Use Movement as a Medicine
Find the IPA Physio location near you.