Manual Therapy

Manual therapy techniques on soft tissue and joints helps our patients who are struggling with recent, slow to heal injury or an old injury that has never healed properly.

Manual therapy is intended to control the pain, reduce inflammation, increase the range of motion and reduce restriction in our patient’s affected areas.

Our experienced therapists will perform a full assessment on your affected area and determine which types of manual therapy is best for your condition. Below are some of the commonly recommended manual therapy techniques:

Joint Mobilization

• With this manual therapy technique it requires the manipulation of ailing or restricted joints to loosen or correct a small alignment errors between the different joint structures.
• Getting these structures moving can help build up their strength and support, increase comfortable range of motion and boost the flow of blood and healing nutrients to painful or damaged joints.

Strain-Counterstrain Technique

• This treatment technique is usually used on our patients with back problems. Our physical therapist will be focusing on relieving abnormal neuromuscular reflexes that are causing painful tender points by inducing asymptomatic strain through stretching.

Soft Tissue Mobilization

• Soft tissue mobilization typically helps reduce pain and increase restricted movement in many of our patients. An assessment will be performed by our therapists paying careful attention to each layer to further pinpoint the problem area. With this technique fibrous muscle tissue are broken using deep pressure and rhythmic stretching to relieve the tension that often leads to muscle spasm and chronic pain. The overall goal of this technique is to reduce adhesions, reduce swelling and edema, relieve pain, and restore normal functionality.

High Velocity, Low Amplitude Thrusting

• The goal of this therapy treatment is to efficiently allow the opening and closing of joints in order to restore the optimum range of motion. Joints will be taken only to their restrictive barrier. Pain or structural damage to this joints will be non-existent as this joints will not be taken past their anatomical limit.

Muscle Energy Techniques (MET)

• MET is manual therapy intervention in which our physical therapists perform to lengthen shortened muscles which relaxes the muscles and to mobilize restricted joints. Muscles in a state of hypertonic usually cause the joints to become tight and restricted. This type of procedure also involves patient as being an active participant. During the procedure, the patient will apply a voluntary contraction that is utilized against a controlled counterforce applied from the physical therapist from a specific direction. MET can be used to treat stiff joints and muscle cramps or muscle spasms.

In addition to manual therapy, our therapists will usually include other treatment options or exercise programs for our patients to participate in both at their own home and in our clinic. This includes but not limited to muscle strengthening, stretching and aerobic conditioning. This helps ensure our patients will recover to their normal movement state as soon as possible.