Manual therapy is a hands-on treatment by clinicians to treat muscle aches, joint pain, and limited range of motion. It encompasses a variety of techniques including soft tissue mobilization of muscles, specific joint mobilization, and joint manipulation.

The three most notable forms of manual therapy are:

• Manipulation is the application of a rapid force into a joint(s). Manipulation is often associated with an audible popping sound called cavitation.
• Mobilization is a slower, more controlled process of articular and soft-tissue stretching intended to improve joint mobility.
• Massage is typically the repetitive rubbing, stripping or kneading of muscle and fascia tissues to facilitate healing.

Manual therapy has been proven to be an important part of an overall conservative treatment plan for a variety of conditions including:

• Adhesive capsulitis
• Shoulder impingement
• Shoulder stiffness/limited range of motion
• Tennis elbow
• Golfers elbow
• Pinched nerves
• Limited joint range of motion
• Capsule tightness
• Postsurgical stiffness
• Much more.

Manual therapy is typically part of a complete treatment plan that is customized for your specific needs. Give us a call to learn how we can incorporate manual therapy into your rehabilitation program.

If you are a youth, collegiate, elite, or professional athlete, when you are injured, you need a physical therapist with experience rehabilitating sports-related injuries.

Athletes place higher demands on the muscles and joints and also require sport-specific training to recover speed, power, and agility. This is the specific training that our therapists provide.

Our physical therapists have years of experience rehabilitating athletes with:

• Postsurgical rehabilitation of the knee, shoulder, ankle, hip, and spine
• Shoulder & rotator cuff injuries
• Ligament sprains
• Muscle strains
• ACL, PCL, MCL, LCL rehab
• Tendonitis/bursitis
• Post-fracture rehab
• Tennis elbow
• Overhead sports injuries (throwing, swimming, etc.)
• Running & cycling injuries

A Personalized Recovery Process

The process starts with a thorough evaluation of your condition and your personal goals. We then provide a custom program including the following:

• Control of Pain & Inflammation
• Recovery of Range of Motion
• Hands-on Techniques
• Neuromuscular Retraining
• Core & Extremity Strengthening
• Balance & Proprioceptive Activities
• Speed, Endurance, & Power Training
• Sport-specific Retraining

Optimizing the Recovery Process

Injuries are an unfortunate side effect of sports but they don’t have to sideline you indefinitely. With the application of the latest clinical research, we can work hand-in-hand with your referring physician/surgeon to optimize the recover process so you can reach your full potential.

Give us a call today to learn more about our sports rehabilitation program.

Recent Blog Posts From Our Office Of Chronic Pain Treatment West Bloomfield MI

Proper Shoveling Technique to Avoid Low Back Pain

As the snow starts to fall and the shovels come out again, it’s essential to keep in mind the safe way to shovel the driveway. Improperly shoveling snow injures thousands each year, bringing heart problems, fractures, and back injuries to the misfortunate shoveler. You can prevent these injuries by preparing correctly and deal with any potential damage through Chronic Pain Treatment West Bloomfield MI. Let’s try to avoid the back pain first!

Proper Shoveling Form

Here are some tips that will help you avoid the dreaded lower back pain this winter:

• Lift with your legs

• • • By utilizing your legs’ strength, you can move snow easier while putting less pressure on your back. Make sure to keep your back straight when lifting.

• Bend from the hips and knees

• • • When you bend over to pick up snow, do so by bending your knees, lowering your core lower closer to the ground. This technique avoids bending your spine, where the lower back would take on most of the weight

• Hold the shovel correctly

• • • Keep the shovel close to your body, place one hand firmly on the handle, and one reasonably close to the shovelhead. This form provides extra leverage to make lifting easier.

• Avoid the ‘twist and throw’

• • • Instead of twisting your back 180° to throw snow behind you, pivot on your back foot and rotate your body to toss the snow. 

• Pace yourself

• • It’s not a race! Many try to get the job done too quickly and wear themselves out. Stay hydrated, and take your time.

As annoying as shoveling is, try to consider the activity as a workout instead of a chore. This mindset can help you positively frame the action and treat your body right during intense exercise. Chronic Pain Treatment West Bloomfield MI, can help teach you healthy lifting methods and prepare you for all kinds of exercise. 

Other Solutions

If you still are having trouble with lower back pain as a result of shoveling snow, there are a few other options to consider:

• Using an abdominal belt

• • • These belts are designed to help support the core during workouts.

• Chronic Pain Treatment West Bloomfield MI

• • • Empower PT has a team ready to help with lower back injuries. From healing to re-training our team will be right by your side. 

• Using a Snow blower

• • • While somewhat expensive, snow blowers provide a totally different snow removal experience, which is usually less time-consuming but is still a serious workout.

• Try a different shovel

• • Ergonomic shovels are designed with lower back pain in mind and are sold at most hardware stores. 

There are an assortment of injuries associated with shoveling snow, the most common being soft tissue injuries due to overworking the muscles and ligaments. These can be very hard to deal with, however, our physical therapy in Southfield, MI can provide an injured shoveler with the personalized treatment that makes a big difference. Empower PT has an assortment of services designed with your health in mind, visit our website to learn more.

Contact Chronic Pain Treatment West Bloomfield MI

Treating Foot and Ankle Injuries

Nobody likes getting injured, but at some point, everyone goes through with it. Among the more irritating types are injuries to the foot and ankle. What at first seems like a minor annoyance can become worse if simply ignored. To make sure it returns to normal, it’s important to know what kind of foot/ankle injury it is, how to treat it, and who to seek treatment from. Contact Empower PT, Chronic Pain Treatment West Bloomfield MI today to learn how our team can help you! 

Identifying the Injury

There are three main types of ankle injuries: sprains, strains, and fractures. For sprains and strains, both involve over-stretching and tearing, but differ in what is being affected. For sprains, it’s the ligaments. For strains, it’s the muscles or tendons. They are often confused for each other due to the similar symptoms, like stiffness, swelling, and pain in the joint. The easiest way to tell the difference is the muscle spasms that often come with strains and the bruising sprains bring. Fractures occur when at least one bone in the ankle joint breaks. It’s not unheard of to hear the breaking as it occurs and it is very painful. 

Treating the Injury

Sprains and strains have similar treatments, with mild cases being relieved by resting, icing, compression, and elevation. In more severe cases, surgery would be required to fix the damage that has been done. 

Chronic Pain Treatment West Bloomfield MI

Foot and ankle injuries can be extremely difficult to live with if you do not seek proper treatment. With the help of our Chronic Pain Treatment West Bloomfield MI at Empower PT & Fitness, we can allow your injury to heal properly and in a timely manner. Get in touch with one of our offices to learn more about how we can assist you. We look forward to treating you! 

What Do Sports Medicine Doctors Do?

Like many of us, we have all had accidents while playing the sports we enjoy most. If you are suffering from a sports-related injury, then it is important to seek help from a sports related injury doctor. It is important to seek these professionals as opposed to your regular health care provider because our Chronic Pain Treatment West Bloomfield MI at Empower Physical Therapy & Fitness is best equipped to help treat your injury properly. 

These health care providers will help you come up with better alternatives than surgery to make sure you are healed properly and so that the injury does not return. These doctors are taught to heal these types of injuries correctly and make sure their patients can return to playing as fast and safe as possible. Chronic Pain Treatment West Bloomfield MI is highly recommended in treating and helping their patients get back on track as quickly and safely as possible. Sports medicine doctors also help injured patients exercise safely to regain mobility and performance so when they are able to return to their sport, players will not slack. 

Specializing in Sports Injury Treatment

Sports medicine doctors also will teach their patients how to properly take care of their injuries while still staying in outstanding shape. Normally, they take care of non-operative injuries in muscles, bones, and joints such as sprains and strains, fractures, knee, ankle, and foot injuries, shoulder injuries, hand and wrist injuries, sports-induced asthma, eating disorders, concussions, tendonitis and more. Call us for Chronic Pain Treatment West Bloomfield MI for more information on how we will help your injury. 

Not only do sports medicine doctors help treat injuries, they can also help treat certain illnesses and nutrition issues you may be experiencing. Our Sports Medicine Doctor has been known to help treat many of their patients along with helping determine when their patients can return to their sport post injury.

Contact Us For Chronic Pain Treatment West Bloomfield MI

Normally, their work involves injury helping patients return to their sport with great performance and making sure it is safe regarding their injury. They also facilitate and monitor injury prevention, identify the cause of an injury to prevent it from recurring, prescribing medication to help with discomfort, minimizing as much time as possible from the sport, and helping performance while still treating the patient. Call a sports medicine doctor at Empower Physical Therapy to schedule an appointment if you are suffering from a sports related injury. 

Playing basketball is a great way to exercise and stay active during the year. You can play the sport outside in the warmer months and indoors all year round. However, playing basketball leaves you at risk for certain injuries. Here at Chronic Pain Treatment West Bloomfield MI, we understand that enduring an injury due to basketball can be tough, but we strive to lead you towards rehabilitation. We focus on tailor-made physical therapy treatments to get you feeling your best and back to playing the game you love. If you or someone you know is suffering from a basketball-related injury visit our website to find out how physical therapy can help you!

Common Basketball Injuries 

When it comes to any sport stretching and warming up are key in order to prevent injuries. However, it doesn’t mean that you still can’t obtain injuries even if you are stretching properly. Basketball is a tough sport to play that takes a toll on your entire body. Some common basketball-related injuries are as follows:

• Ankle Sprains
• Jammed Fingers
• Knee Injuries
• Deep Thigh Bruising
• Facial Cuts
• Foot Fractures
• ACL Tear
• Jumper’s Knee 
• Achilles Tendinitis

Treatment Methods for Basketball Injuries 

Depending on the severity of a basketball injury you may need medical attention. But a common way to help alleviate some pain is the “RICE” method which is:

• Rest 
• Ice
• Compression 
• Elevation

If your injury is more serious it is very important that you get the medical treatment you need to understand your injury and start a treatment plan with a medical professional. 

How Physical Therapy Can Help Basketball Related Injuries

If your basketball-related injury is more severe such as Achilles tendonitis or jumper’s knee, physical therapy is a great treatment option to help rebuild strength and get you back to playing basketball. Physical therapy is also used to help patients recover after surgery for injuries such as an ACL tear or torn tendons. The main focus of physical therapy is to help patients at their rate to strengthen their muscles and overall body, improve mobility, and achieve their goals of rehabilitation. At Chronic Pain Treatment West Bloomfield MI our expert physical therapists pride themselves on making a treatment method that is tailor-made to the needs of their patients to get back to being healthy and strong. Physical therapy is a great treatment option for basketball-related injuries. We work hard with athletes to have them playing the sports they love again at their best ability. 

Chronic Pain Treatment West Bloomfield MI

Enduring a basketball-related injury shouldn’t have you fearing you won’t be able to play the game again at the same ability. At Empower Physical Therapy we understand the needs of athletes and our patients. Our physical therapist makes our patients’ recovery process their number one priority. To find out more about Chronic Pain Treatment West Bloomfield MI click or call at (586) 868-7000.

How Can Manual Therapy Help Ease Chronic Pain?

Those suffering from chronic pain often chalk it up to just being a normal part of the aging process and view it as something to be managed rather than eliminated. However, it is never normal to be living in a state of constant pain. Luckily for you, manual therapy can help.  If you or a loved one is suffering from chronic pain and is interested in beginning Chronic Pain Treatment West Bloomfield MI, look no further than Empower Physical Therapy. Our skilled team has the experience and resources to make your pain a thing of the past!

What is Chronic Pain Treatment West Bloomfield MI?

The term manual therapy refers to hands-on treatment that can be used to treat both aches and pains and restore range of motion. Manual therapy is typically divided into the following three subsections:

• Manipulation
• Mobilization
• Massage

Manipulation refers to the rapid movement of a joint that often produces a loud popping sound (cavitation). When manipulating the joint moves to its anatomical limit in an effort to restore its full range of motion. Mobilization often consists of slower movements that stretch soft tissue to improve the mobility of the joint. It also involves movements of varying speeds. Lastly, a massage is the repetitive hands-on manipulation of a muscle through rubbing or kneading, designed to reduce tension and promote healing. 

Why Should Manual Therapy Interest Me?

Perhaps the biggest strength of manual therapy as a treatment method is that it is widely customizable and is incredibly specific to your condition. No two manual therapy patients have the same exact problem, and manual therapists are trained to be able to tailor treatment to your unique circumstance. Aside from its ability to match your exact condition, here are some of the other proven benefits of manual therapy.

• Muscle relaxation
• Breaks up scar tissue
• Improves Flexibility
• Improves range of motion
• Reduces muscle spasms 

Seeking Chronic Pain Treatment West Bloomfield MI?

If you or someone you know is looking to start Chronic Pain Treatment West Bloomfield MI, our team at Empower Physical Therapy has it under control. Our two convenient locations are filled with state of the art equipment and staff of experts that will help you return to full health as quickly as possible. Contact us today to set up an appointment!

Should I Get Physical Therapy Treatment For My Shoulder Pain?

You may not realize how many everyday activities you utilize your shoulders until you start experiencing shoulder pain. Everyday tasks such as brushing your hair, reaching into a cabinet, or exercising can become daunting and can have a significant impact on your daily life. The pain can cause a great deal of discomfort and hamper your ability to move your arm around freely. If you are experiencing shoulder pain you should consider seeking Chronic Pain Treatment West Bloomfield MI. The team at Empower Physical Therapy can help you identify how the injury occurred, help you with the recovery process, and provide methods to prevent any future shoulder injuries.

Common Causes of Shoulder Pain

Due to the shoulder’s complex anatomy, there are many causes for shoulder pain. It can arise from a variety of activities such as manual labor, overuse and repetitive movement, sports, and more. Often the cause can be identified by going to Chronic Pain Treatment West Bloomfield MI, and identifying the area of the shoulder in which you are experiencing pain. Common causes of shoulder pain can include:

• Arthritis
• Torn Rotator Cuff
• Dislocated Shoulder
• Pinched Nerve

When Should You Seek Physical Therapy Treatment?

While shoulder pain may be common, it is important to know when you should seek physical therapy for your injury. In many cases, you should be able to treat the pain at home with over the counter medicines, rest, and heat and ice applications. However, if you are not sure how the injury occurred, at-home care is not reducing the pain or you are experiencing severe pain, you may need to seek professional treatment. There are many signs in which you may need to seek help from a medical professional. You should consider Chronic Pain Treatment West Bloomfield MI if you exhibit any of the following signs:

• Shoulder pain that persists for a few days
• Inability to raise your arm
• Swelling or bruising around your shoulder
• An injury that causes a deformity of the joint 
• Repeat shoulder pain

Contact Our Team at Empower Chronic Pain Treatment West Bloomfield MI

By going to Chronic Pain Treatment West Bloomfield MI, the team at Empower PT can help patients with many things. These include:

• Increase shoulder strength
• Help restore mobility
• Help patients safely return to pre-injury activities
• Provide tips to prevent any future injuries

If you are experiencing any of the above signs of shoulder pain, please contact Empower Physical Therapy to schedule an appointment today!

Should I Be Stretching Everyday?

Should I Be Stretching Every Day?

When you wake up in the morning, do you yawn and stretch? Well, studies say that you should be doing more than that! Our Chronic Pain Treatment West Bloomfield MI at Empower PT and Fitness encourages stretching, and there are plenty of good reasons why you should be stretching daily. Here are some ways that stretching daily will benefit you:

1. Help your flexibility
2. Give you a full range of motion
3. Physical activity performance will increase
4. Help your posture
5. Provide stress relief and relax your thoughts
6. Reduce headaches from tension
7. Reduce the risk of injury and pulling or straining muscles
8. Help circulation and prevent blood flow problems

These reasons are seemingly extraordinary but they are why people who do intense training and physical therapy do these stretches before working out. To build on this knowledge, our clinic of Chronic Pain Treatment West Bloomfield MI will provide you with two types of stretches you can do at home daily, and then what to do and not do when stretching.

1. Static stretching: holding a position for 10 to 30 seconds and good for after exercise.
2. Dynamic stretching: active movements that stretch your muscles and do not hold a position.

When doing either of these types of stretches and if you choose Chronic Pain Treatment West Bloomfield MI:

• DO

• • • Talk with your doctor about what stretches may aggravate a past injury
    • Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth
    • Work on your posture first because this will make the rest of your body more comfortable with more stretching
    • After posture, pick some target points to work on as you do not want to overdo it on your body
    • Keep your stretches pain-free; if it hurts, stop

• DON’T

• • Bounce – your muscles contracting will tear them
  • Static stretching before exercise, only do dynamic stretches before and static after
  • Start quickly – you’ll want to warm up slowly and not shock your body

Contact Empower Chronic Pain Treatment West Bloomfield MI Today!

If you follow these suggestions, you will be on your way to keeping your body healthy and your muscles in good shape to start Chronic Pain Treatment West Bloomfield MI. Your therapist will examine your muscles and capabilities before assigning tasks and moving your muscles accordingly to help with your specific needs. Visit our website and book an appointment to help your muscles feel their best today!

Contact Us For Chronic Pain Treatment West Bloomfield MI