Physical therapy is a field based on natural, non-invasive methods of conservative health care mainly rooted in hands-on, therapeutic exercise and the use of various “modalities” or machines/equipment-based adjuncts to treat pain, injury, neuromusculoskeletal conditions, and post-operative cases or for the prevention of injury.
It is based on physical, chemical, and mechanical treatments given by licensed providers (physical therapists and physical therapy assistants). Hands-on or manual therapy techniques may utilize soft tissue and joint mobilizing-based processes. Exercises may focus on motion, flexibility, strength, endurance, balance, power, agility, coordination, and return to functional activities. Therapists may use machines that utilize heat, cold, electricity, light, or sound to reduce pain/inflammation and optimize healing.
The ultimate goal of physical therapy is the 3 C’s – to make patients Comfortable again, Confident, and Capable of going back to moving their bodies and resuming the activities they love as safely as possible.
For Peak Performance, the key to professional physical therapy is having an expert understanding of human movement (biomechanics). It’s something that traditional physical therapy education only does at a basic and limited level. Our providers have all undergone more extensive specialty fellowship or certification level training in Applied Functional Science© with the Gray Institute.
We’re proud to be Rochester’s only clinic where every therapist has this extra training. That allows us to analyze moments of the injured area and adjacent joints/tissues and even the entire body to identify shortcomings that may be causing an overuse problem, holding back the recovery, or creating a future risk you were unaware of. It’s part of how Peak Performance succeeds at providing truly “one-on-one” care – – while time spent individually is critical and necessary, we believe it’s really HOW you spend that time that matters. Being biomechanical problem-solving experts… “body mechanics,” if you will, helps us genuinely provide customized, personalized care.
We don’t believe in “one-size-fits-all” approaches. You are unique, and your history and your problems are uncommon. You cannot be boiled down to a simple diagnosis name or a finding on a film or a lab test.
Treating this way takes extra time and attention. But we believe that’s the best way to be a Difference Maker in the lives of our patients. The initial evaluation at Peak Performance is the key to unlocking a personalized therapy plan for you or a loved one. Call us today to see if we can be of help!
Your Initial Evaluation
Your first visit to Peak Performance is crucial to understanding what is happening in your body. The evaluation has several vital purposes – identifying the injured tissue that’s causing symptoms, identifying and measuring functional abilities and needs, and discovering biomechanical contributing factors that will affect recovery and reinjury risk. Often it confirms a physician’s findings from a prescription. Still, other times, our expert therapists may find other potential issues requiring discussion with your physician, further testing, or careful attention to your response to early treatments to confirm the findings.
The evaluation begins with a standardized body part-specific questionnaire that helps us better understand how life is presently affected by symptoms or limitations. These allow a trustworthy source for future comparisons to ensure you’re progressing as expected. Your therapist will sit down with you and ask various questions to deeply understand what’s gone on. The symptoms occur, understand patterns that may exist, review crucial medical history, and find out your key concerns and goals for recovery.
The physical exam is the next step. For this, patients need to be wearing clothing that allows easy access, especially the painful/injured area. The therapist will often use their hands to palpate the tissues in the area to appreciate tenderness, warmth, swelling, soft tissue status, movement qualities, and joint integrity.
Physical evaluations we perform are individualized but may include:
Postural assessment/body alignment
Functional movements
Body part specific
General – day to day, work, athletic/recreational motion or positions for symptom reproduction and movement quality and capacity
Range of motion and flexibility
Neurologic exam for nerve function and integrity
Orthopedic special tests to identify injured tissues
Tenderness, swelling, and soft tissue status
Strength, endurance, power
Balance, coordination, agility
The evaluation is rarely complete in a single session. While most crucial testing is done on the 1st visit, it is an ongoing process to ensure “deeper,” or hidden compensations and shortcomings are not missed and retest formerly limited areas to prove significant gains are being made.
A critical part of your evaluation, as experts in function, is reviewing more life-like demands of the injured body part or region and whole-body performance. It’s crucial to appreciate how body segments interact with each other, where old injuries or issues (thought to be resolved but often found still lacking) may play a role, and to identify not only what the body is struggling with but also where the body is struggling it is succeeding. The testing helps formulate the starting point for pain-free exercise programming. Often, through subtle biomechanical “tweaking,” your therapist will be able to help you comfortably perform needed movements that usually hurt and prevent you from moving.
Function Is Key
The critical foundation of our evaluations and treatment programs is function. All of our physical therapists and physical therapy assistants have gone through formal certification or fellowship level training in Applied Functional Science©, meaning they have unique knowledge and skills in testing and understanding human movement and how body parts and tissues interact.
That allows our therapists to design exercises that target specific needs and do so with a unique ability to tweak or customize to notch up demands when needed so that day-to-day life abilities can improve quickest and dial things down just enough to make formerly painful movements more comfortable. It is an art and a science that we could not do without the extra training we’ve gone through.
Unfortunately, this is not formal physical therapy training. We’ve been blessed to train under and learn from the world’s leaders in functional biomechanics and therapy/training/exercise. The heart of this is appreciating what we call “authentic” human mechanics and movements. When the body performs activities that are more “authentic,” it is more natural, and the “leap of faith” required from therapy exercises to real-life demands is much smaller and quicker to achieve.
An example might be the old Quads knee extension machine at the fitness center. It does, in fact, massively fatigue your quads, and it’s a challenging exercise. But stop for a moment and think. If you’ve ever had a knee problem, how often was the need or issue related to your inability to kick things with a load hanging on your foot? Not too often, right. The Quad machine might be a good exercise, but it’s not authentic. People with knee problems have issues getting out of chairs, doing stairs, twisting in a sport, or getting out of the car.
Therapy exercises need to target the correct tissues, but it’s got to help real-life as quickly as possible to make a meaningful difference. The leap of faith from PT exercises to real life has to be small. Now that’s a straightforward example, but if you expand that to the entire body and all the directions those parts need to move, it becomes a bit more complicated. But that’s why your therapists at Peak Performance are here for you – so you don’t have to rely on the internet or a friend or some canned exercise sheet based on a diagnosis or a body part!
Treatment Plan
After your physical therapist has gathered the relevant information they need, they will design a customized treatment plan. The focus of your program can take all sorts of directions depending on what your symptoms might be and what limitations you have.
Whether you are ailed by pain, discomfort, tingling, or numbness, an important starting point is to address specific symptoms and inflammation reduction. We have a vast array of techniques and machines, such as our Class IV deep tissue laser, at our disposal to consider on the way to making you feel better.
The physical therapists at Peak Performance will add treatments to help you reach your goals and educate you about places in your day-to-day life where you may be sabotaging your recovery by overloading the injured tissue. Optimal recovery will include “adding the good” and “taking away the bad” so you get the fastest return to the things you love doing.
At the end of your evaluation, your physical therapist will review the findings and their working hypothesis for what is causing your symptoms, if any other areas that might be contributing that need to be addressed, and your treatment/care plan. This overview will help you better understand what your treatment will look like.
The good news is that we’re going to help you help yourself. We believe that as important as our treatments will be in the clinic, you play a vital role and can make a massive difference in your recovery – we want to teach you precisely what to do so you’re making a difference every day toward a faster and complete recovery, rather than only being helped the several times a week you’re likely attending therapy in the clinic!
Peak Performance Can Help with Your Physical Therapy
Peak Performance is dedicated to providing high-quality sports and orthopedic care. Our physical therapy services are customized/personalized for each patient to expedite recovery. Call us today if you or a loved one needs our expert biomechanical problem-solving-based physical therapy services. We’ve had patients drive to see us from Buffalo, Syracuse, Olean, Hilton, Wayne, Livingston, Canandaigua…and more. We’d be honored to have the opportunity to help you or your loved one!
