Are you hesitant about the costs and worth of physical therapy? Are you unsure if P3 Athletic is right for you? Are you unclear about precisely how we will resolve your physical pain or limitations? If these thoughts are crossing your mind today, or have at some point during your training, then this article is for you.
As a physical therapist, I’ve learned that there are vast differences in the answer to the question, “what is physical therapy?”. I’d like to help demystify this question by talking about my physical therapy clinic, P3 Athletic, by starting with what it is NOT.
We do NOT simply put a bandaid on your injury.
I will not rub your shoulder or back for 15 minutes, give you an ultrasound treatment, have you do you some exercises with a physical therapy aide, and then advise you to rest for four to six weeks. Yes, some injuries have a true inflammatory component that must be respected, but many injuries don’t. Movement is essential to healing and recovery, and I’ll prescribe specific exercises, apply appropriate manual therapies, and identify the necessary steps needed to get you back to 100%.
At P3, I do NOT tell you to avoid your deadlift, squat, bench press, or the activities that led to your injury.
Now, if you’ve had severe, acute back pain for one week and your one rep max deadlift is included in your fitness programming, maybe you should talk to your coach about modifying your activity for this week. But avoiding the movement all together, forever, is not necessarily the answer. In fact, sometimes it prevents you from recovering. I’ve seen people “injure” their backs from reaching down to pick up a piece of paper! Was that piece of paper heavy? No. Should they never bend over to pick up an item off the floor again? That just sounds ridiculous. Avoiding a particular movement, long-term, due to an uninformed fear of further injury is something we call “fear avoidance”, and it can be detrimental to recovery. As an experienced physical therapist, I will provide you with an individualized plan for optimizing your movement so you can train and play sport at your desired frequency and intensities.
At P3, I do NOT default to treating you two to three times a week for 12 weeks, or even longer.
I’ll spend an entire hour with you during the initial evaluation session and for every treatment session that follows. That’s two to three times more time with a licensed physical therapist, compared to an in-network provider model that often relies on physical therapy aides or assistants. Giving you my undivided attention for a full hour is critical to the P3 approach. This allows me to take into account other contributing factors to your primary area of the concern. For an example, if you’re an athlete experiencing shoulder pain or irritation while throwing, serving, or weightlifting, there are a lot of details to explore.
- Is there a limitation in your thoracic extension?
- Do you have a stiff first rib?
- Do you have weak rotator cuff muscles?
- Do you have scapular control and stability issues?
- Is there a myofascial or muscle length limitation?
- Are you properly positioning and stabilizing the spine?
- Is there a neuro-muscular control or biomechanical fault?
A thorough understanding of your situation throughout the program allows us to put together a customized, flexible, and highest-impact treatment plan that will accelerate your results or recovery.
In other words, our sessions will NOT be 20-30 minutes every other week and consist of me simply giving you a handout of exercises to do, hoping to fix your problem.
Unfortunately, some providers must implement treatment plans that aren’t solely based on the best recovery path. This is largely a result of health insurance companies cutting payments to health care providers, which drives up the number of patients required to be seen each day in order for the clinic to stay afloat. P3 was founded by the opposing paradigm. Physical therapists should see fewer patients and spend more time with each one, which allows them to give their utmost attention, energy, and care.
To sum it up, I’ve built P3 on a model that allows me to see you right away, begin treatment, and get you feeling better and moving better, sooner. By spending significantly more time with you than most providers, we can tackle your physical obstacles and goals by getting to the root of the problem. My first priority is to get you to where you want to be in life, not limited by your body.
If you’re interested in learning more about how I can help you reach your physical goals, request a free discovery session.