Living with chronic pain is tough. It affects everything—from your mobility to your mood—and finding relief can feel like an endless struggle.

You have probably tried various treatments that provide temporary solutions but don’t address the root cause of the pain.

This is where physical therapy comes into play. Offering a holistic, non-invasive approach, physical therapy helps manage chronic pain long-term.

Let’s dive into the benefits of physical therapy for chronic pain and how it can improve your quality of life.

Tailored Treatment Plans

One of the best things about physical therapy is that it’s never a one-size-fits-all solution.

Your physical therapist develops a personalized treatment plan based on your unique situation. Whether you’re dealing with arthritis, back pain, or a sports injury, they’ll design exercises and therapies tailored to you.

Unfortunately, it’s unsafe if you suffer from major balance issues. You don’t want to fall and make the problem worse. So, know your limits.

This customized approach makes the treatment highly effective because it’s designed around the specific causes and symptoms of your pain, rather than relying on generic methods that may not suit everyone.

Non-Invasive Pain Management

When you think of chronic pain, invasive treatments like surgery or long-term medication often come to mind. While these options can sometimes be necessary, they also come with risks and potential side effects.

Physical therapy, on the other hand, offers a completely non-invasive alternative.

Through techniques like manual therapy, stretching, and targeted exercises, you can manage your pain without resorting to surgery or addictive pain medications. And the best part? You’re not just masking the symptoms—you’re addressing the cause of your pain.

Improved Mobility and Functionality

Chronic pain often leads to limited movement and functionality, making even simple daily tasks feel like monumental challenges. With physical therapy, you can regain mobility, flexibility, and strength.

Whether you struggle to bend down to tie your shoes or walk without discomfort, physical therapy works to restore your range of motion. Through consistent sessions, you’ll notice improvements in your ability to move and complete daily activities without pain.

Over time, those small wins add up, bringing you back to a more active and independent lifestyle.

Long-Term Pain Relief

Many treatments for chronic pain offer quick fixes that wear off after a few hours or days. Physical therapy, however, focuses on providing sustainable, long-term relief.

By strengthening the muscles around the affected area and correcting imbalances, you’re addressing the root cause of your pain.

Physical therapy doesn’t just treat the symptoms temporarily—it helps prevent pain from returning. This means you can enjoy life without the constant fear of a flare-up.

With consistent effort and guidance from your therapist, you’ll build a stronger foundation for lasting comfort.

Reduced Dependence on Medication

It’s easy to fall into the trap of relying on medication to manage chronic pain. Painkillers, especially opioids, may provide short-term relief but come with risks, such as addiction and side effects.

Physical therapy helps you break that cycle.

By offering effective, drug-free pain management techniques, it reduces your need for medication. Over time, you’ll find that you can manage your pain through exercise, stretching, and other therapeutic methods, allowing you to decrease or even eliminate your dependency on painkillers.

Prevention of Further Injury

Chronic pain often results from imbalances or improper movements that strain certain parts of the body. Physical therapy helps correct these issues before they lead to further injury.

Your therapist not only treats your existing pain but also educates you on proper posture, alignment, and movement techniques that prevent future injuries.

Whether it’s learning how to lift objects correctly or improving your walking gait, you’ll gain tools that protect your body from harm. By strengthening muscles and joints, and improving overall body mechanics, you build resilience against further damage.

Mental and Emotional Benefits

Living with chronic pain doesn’t just affect your body—it takes a toll on your mental health too. The frustration, anxiety, and depression that often accompany chronic pain can make it even harder to cope.

Physical therapy offers a dual benefit: it alleviates physical discomfort while improving your mental well-being.

As you gain more control over your pain and your body becomes stronger, you’ll start feeling more optimistic and empowered.

Customized Home Exercise Programs

One of the key components of successful physical therapy is what happens outside of the clinic.

Your therapist will equip you with a set of home physiotherapy exercises that allow you to continue your progress on your own time.

These exercises are specifically designed to maintain the improvements you’ve made during your sessions, ensuring your pain relief lasts longer.

Plus, by integrating these exercises into your routine, you’ll build a sense of independence in managing your pain.

The more consistent you are with your home program, the faster you’ll see results, making it an essential part of your recovery journey.

Start Your Journey to Pain Relief With Expert Manual Therapy

Anyone who has experienced chronic pain knows that it can feel overwhelming, but physical therapy offers a pathway to long-term relief.

By focusing on personalized care, non-invasive treatments, and sustainable results, it provides a holistic solution to managing pain.

The benefits of physical therapy for chronic pain extend beyond just addressing symptoms—they empower you to take control of your body and your life.

That’s why, if you’re looking for a treatment that delivers lasting results, physical therapy is the right choice.

If you are looking for competent, reliable, and experts in the field of physical therapy, look no further than Expert Manual Therapy.

Our licensed physical therapists in Austin offer hands-on techniques, manual therapy, and tailored exercise programs to help you find lasting relief.

Contact us today to schedule a consult and let your recovery begin!

A car accident is a traumatizing experience that often leaves victims physically injured for an extended period. That can affect work opportunities, day-to-day responsibilities, and everything else.

So, you naturally want to heal as fast as possible to get back to your normal life without those issues.

Today, we’re going to go over things to do for faster car accident recovery and reclaim your normal life.

Let’s get started!

1: Speak with Your Doctor

The first thing you should do when you go through a car accident is immediately get checked out by your doctor.

Most people consider this for legal reasons. If there are injuries and you need to take legal action, consulting with a doctor will make it far easier to get through the legal system effectively.

However, it’s also important for your health. The sooner you get checked out, the sooner your doctor can diagnose any injuries you suffered, determine how severe they are, and get you into a treatment program.

The faster you start treating something, the faster you can heal from it. That goes for major and minor injuries.

2: Eat a Healthy Diet

What you put into your body has a huge impact on how well your body functions. This includes the various healing responses your body has built in.

If you’re eating a diet rich in nutrients and low in all the things that are bad for you, your body has more resources to divert to the healing process.

Not only is this healthier for you in general, but that means you’re going to naturally heal faster than you would otherwise.

This does not mean that you can simply diet your way to healing. Car accident injuries tend to have long-term negative impacts on your health and overall capabilities, and the body can only do so much on its own.

However, eating properly will dramatically help with your situation.

3: Sleep Well and Rest Often

As you’ll soon see, you can’t rest all the time and expect to heal properly. However, sleep and resting your body are still imperative to the healing process.

Get a full night’s sleep every night even if it’s a little more difficult due to pain and not being able to get comfortable, and any time you exercise or follow our other tips, make sure to give your body plenty of time to rest.

Your body naturally repairs itself while you rest. Even if you’re doing everything else right, if you’re exhausted, you won’t see the results you’re looking for, and healing will take much longer.

4: Stretch

It might seem like a bad idea to use any injured body part at all, but it helps if you do it properly. Stretching regularly will help break up tension and relieve inflammation buildup. This will let your body heal more effectively, and you will heal faster.

However, we do need to emphasize that stretches should be done properly, and they should not overexert the injured area. While some movement is optimal, pushing it too far can make the injury worse.

We have a solution to that problem later on.

5: Exercise Supporting Muscles and Joints

With most car accident injuries being fairly serious, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to go through your normal workout routine while you heal. However, exercising within your limits is not only a good way to maintain your overall health but can also accelerate your recovery.

Incorporating joint manipulation techniques to gently mobilize the affected areas can significantly aid in getting rid of muscle and joint pain. By carefully exercising the muscles and joints that support the injured area, these strengthened supporting structures can alleviate pressure and stress, thereby enhancing healing.

This proactive approach can expedite the return of mobility and shorten the recovery time, allowing you to resume full activity sooner.

However, it’s crucial to approach this method correctly, as improper execution or overexertion could worsen the injury. It’s essential not to let the potential risks deter you from beneficial exercise. We’ll outline safe and effective strategies for implementing these techniques later.

6: Use Ice, Heat, and Anti-Inflammatories

Most of the pain from an injury tends to come from inflammation building up. This is a response your body has to protect from the injury. It starts swelling the affected area with blood to form a shield around the injury while your body takes care of the healing process. Unfortunately, that swelling also puts a lot of pressure on the injury.

There are two ways to help relieve this without spending a lot of money or taking any serious medications.

First, there are your tried-and-true anti-inflammatory pain relievers. Ibuprofen and acetaminophen are both available over the counter, and if use them in cycles, they can manage your inflammation and reduce pain reliably.

They won’t do all the work, and they’re not solutions for long-term use, but they can be helpful sparingly while you try to heal.

Then, there’s ice and heat. Ice is simple. You can buy cheap ice packs in most stores, freeze them, and use those to apply cold to the injury for 15 minutes. That, or you can make your own with ice from home and a soft rag.

For heat, a heating blanket is optimal, but you can also warm a towel and use it for 15 minutes after your ice treatment.

Of course, there are OTC options that provide both of those in the same product.

7: Hydrate

Just like eating healthy will help you heal, so will staying hydrated. Your body needs water for all its functions. That includes healing.

8: Avoid Drinking and Smoking

If you use alcohol or tobacco products, avoid them throughout the healing process. Not only is this healthier in general, but it also helps greatly reduce inflammation that you otherwise don’t notice.

9: Go to Physical Therapy

This is the solution we mentioned earlier when we talked about doing things properly. A physical therapist will guide you through safe exercises and stretches, help guide your diet, and help you along the road to recovery. They can even teach you exercises you can do at home to continue treatment on your own.

Contact Expert Manual Therapy to Start Healing Now

Our tips for faster car accident recovery can significantly aid your healing process, but for a comprehensive recovery, professional assistance is crucial.

At our Austin-based manual therapy clinic, we offer expert physical therapy tailored to effectively address and alleviate your injuries.

Contact us today to schedule your consultation and start on the path to recovery.

Physical therapy can mean the difference between a long-term recovery that leads you back to your normal life and being stuck in perpetual treatments and pain.

It is an essential form of healthcare that many people require for various reasons ranging from the natural effects of age to recovery after life-threatening injuries.

However, not all physical therapists are the same, and with something so important, you want to make sure you get the right physical therapist for you.
Today, we’re going to give you 8 tips to help you find the right physical therapist.

1: Make Sure They’re in Your Area

You can find the best physical therapist in the world, and it won’t mean much if you live halfway across the country. You’ll go to physical therapy regularly for an extended period, and your chosen specialist needs to be within a reasonable distance.

Try to keep your search for potential options within an hour’s drive. If you’re going to be going multiple times per week, you might even want to tighten your search to make sure you can reliably go to your appointments.

2: Get a Referral

One of the easiest ways to find a good physical therapist is to simply ask your doctor for a referral. In many situations, you won’t even have to ask. The doctor will realize how badly you need therapy, and they’ll tell you exactly where to go.

If you trust your doctor and their decision-making skills, trusting their choice of physical therapist is a good idea.

Of course, not every physical therapy patient has a situation that makes their doctor concerned. If that sounds like you, asking who they’d recommend or simply continuing to look around is a great idea.

3: Check Your Insurance Policy

Just like any healthcare service, you’re likely going to want insurance to cover as much of it as possible. It’s unfortunate, but you should always check any potential physical therapists to see if they accept your insurance.

You don’t want to set up an appointment, go to it, and then get hit with a big bill you can’t afford.

Of course, this is only an issue if you plan to have insurance pay for the service. If this is an elective care situation, or you are comfortable paying for the service yourself, you don’t have to worry about your insurance plan. It is still a good idea to check, though.

You don’t want to waste money if you can get most of the service paid for.

4: Look for an Available Service

This one might sound obvious, but you need to make sure the physical therapist you’re about to contact is even available. It might be a bit disheartening to call and be told they can’t get you in for several months due to their schedule. That happens, though.

If you find an amazing therapist and they tell you it will be a couple of weeks, you might want to wait for a short time to get that superior service you’re looking for.

However, if you reach out, and you’re told that you need to wait for months, you need to find somebody else. If you’re going to be going through long-term therapy sessions, you can always switch if you want. Unfortunately, your healing can’t wait too long for an opening.

5: Make Sure You Get Along

A lot of patients don’t think about this unless something goes wrong, but your physical therapist is going to be a very intimate part of your life. Even with the simplest treatments, you’re in a vulnerable position. You’re not at your best, and you might be a little embarrassed when you can’t do something you know you can do easily any other time.

You want to make sure you get along with the therapist you hire.

Now, you might not be able to speak to them directly before you have an appointment but look at their staff. See how their staff treat you. If they’re people you’re compatible with, then the therapist probably is, too.

On the other hand, if you can’t even stand calling a company, you should probably pick a different office.

6: Experience Counts

The therapy you’re receiving is meant to be life-changing. You don’t want to mess it up or work with someone who simply doesn’t have the experience to guarantee results.

As such, you should check your therapist’s experience. Most physical therapy offices will proudly boast that they have years of service in the community. So, you shouldn’t have a problem figuring this out. If you can’t find that info, a simple Google search will reveal it right away.

Just make sure you’re with someone who has experience helping people like you and can likely help you recover optimally.

7: Do They Offer the Services You Need

Physical therapy is a very broad term. There are therapists focused on a variety of different situations. Some only help people recover from injuries, some only help people with natural challenges regain their mobility, and some are there exclusively for athletes. Others do a bit of everything.

Before you commit to a physical therapist, you need to make sure that they cater to people with the issue you’re dealing with. Someone who is suffering from muscle degeneration after a serious hospital stay and nerve damage from an accident probably won’t benefit from the treatments offered by someone who solely helps athletes recover from sprained ankles and torn tendons.

8: Success Rate and Patient Approval

You don’t want to take too long to recover. Every day you wait is a day you go without experiencing life to the fullest.

So, you want to make sure you’re going to get results.

Look at the reviews for a physical therapy office and make sure other patients are happy with the treatment they received.

Expert Manual Therapy is Here for You

We hope these tips on choosing the right physical therapist help you make a confident and informed decision. Finding the right professional can make a significant difference in your recovery and overall well-being.

Whether you’re struggling with an injury or trying to combat a loss of mobility from age, we can help.

We offer a wide variety of therapy services for clients from all walks of life. If you need physical therapy in Austin, call Expert Manual Therapy today.

Coordination and balance are crucial for living a mobile life. Unfortunately, those things are often left on the back burner until you get to an advanced age.

Today, we want to provide you with 8 simple tricks to improve coordination and balance that can help you whether you’re a young athlete recovering from an injury or an elderly adult reclaiming your youth.

Let’s get started.

1: Walk in Small Steps

One of the first things you can do is take small steps and keep your feet straight. This sounds so simple, but it also tends to be a core strategy for getting people to walk properly again after a major injury.

It makes you think of your foot placement, and you have to become more aware of your movements. Of course, you can walk normally if you’re able to, but this is a great way to start your journey off with baby steps whether you can walk fine or not.

2: Biking

If you are in decent shape and capable of riding a bike safely, bike riding is a great way to improve coordination and balance.

Biking takes a lot of the stress off your muscle groups, but it still strengthens your body, and it requires you to focus on your balance to keep from falling off.

Unfortunately, it’s unsafe if you suffer from major balance issues. You don’t want to fall and make the problem worse. So, know your limits.

3: Yoga

Yoga is completely dedicated to building balance and coordination along with creating a sense of calm. It’s essentially a very complex art full of stretches. Now, if you suffer from balance and coordination issues, many of the poses done throughout a normal yoga routine won’t be possible.

However, even basic poses and stretches can help get you to that point where you’re coordinated enough to do more complex and complete routines.

If you’re still in decent shape, this can be a great way to improve.

4: Walk Stairs

Stairs require more balance and coordination than you expect. In fact, we often take them for granted in normal life, but when we become injured or reach an advanced age, they suddenly seem impossible.

Walking up stairs in sets that you’re comfortable with can help you build your balance, coordination, and strength in general. Of course, many therapy patients shouldn’t attempt this on their own, but it’s a great option as long as you have the mobility to do it on your own.

5: Simply Walking

Just walking regularly can help you build your sense of balance and coordination. Especially if the cause for your lack of either skill is minor.

Walking engages your body’s natural sense of balance and coordination. If you spend more time doing it, you’ll slowly build your coordination to a degree. It’s not a great way to suddenly pull off extraordinary feats, but if you’re simply trying to keep yourself healthy and independent, walking is perfect.

6: Balance on One Leg

Balancing on one leg is something you probably did as a small kid, and it took a little bit of effort to get used to it. That was likely one of the things that helped you build your balance as a child, and you carried it with you practically all your life. Well, just like when you were a kid, if you want to build your balance up, you can practice standing on one leg.

This is a simple exercise, and you can easily adjust it to match your current capabilities. If you can only lift your foot off the ground an inch, that’s perfectly fine. You will develop balance and coordination with that. If you can tuck your knee in and stand on one leg for an hour, you’ll develop then, too. It’s extremely flexible.

7: Jump Rope

This one can be difficult for many of our patients since they come in after injuries or at an advanced age, but if it’s a plausible activity for you to do, it’s great for building coordination.

You don’t even need to go fast. Just a slow, basic, jump rope technique will dramatically help you develop coordination and spacial awareness. It’s not easy for everyone, but it’s great if you can do it.

8: Jumping Jacks

Jumping jacks are basic exercises that many overlook, but consider the fact that you have to keep your arms and legs in sync while jumping. That requires much more coordination than you think, and it only becomes apparent when your sense of coordination is suddenly impacted.

Just a few sets of jumping jacks per day can greatly increase your coordination without any fancy exercises, equipment, or treatments.

What if You Can’t Do These Balance and Coordination Exercises?

We listed basic balance and coordination exercises, but unfortunately, lots of people can’t do those. Whether they greatly injured themselves, are suffering through the rehab phase of surgery, or have just gotten old, they can’t do jumping jacks and stair walks on their own.

If that sounds like you, the next step is manual therapy.

Manual therapy, or physical therapy as you might have heard it called before, is a specialized service that provides you with one-on-one guidance through carefully chosen exercises to get you back to your old self.

It doesn’t matter if there’s an age issue, a serious injury, or another cause behind your balance and coordination issues. Manual therapy is designed to help.

Where to Get Manual Therapy in Austin, TX?

If you’re wondering how to improve coordination, or you seriously need help getting back to your old self, manual therapy is a great choice for you, and Expert Manual Therapy is your go-to source for help.

We take a fully customized approach. Every single one of our patients is individually assessed, we develop a unique treatment plan for them, and then we guide them through it. We focus on your needs. Not standards.

If you need help with coordination or balance, don’t try to do it on your own. Contact the #1 manual therapy clinic in Austin today.

If you suffer from chronic pain or an injury that results in ongoing pain, you’re likely to hear of two possible solutions—physical therapists or chiropractors.

Both of these specialists are often recommended for similar situations, but their jobs are dramatically different, and the results you can expect are different, as well.

Today, we’re going to compare a physical therapist VS a chiropractor service to help you understand what the right solution is for your situation.

Let’s get started.

What is a Chiropractor?

A chiropractor is a licensed specialist, and they focus on the alignment of various skeletal sections. Typically, they’re highly recommended for spinal pain and chronic pain stemming from the spine, but limbs can also receive chiropractic treatment. Think of it as the advanced version of popping your back.

This is usually done with precise movements while the patient is in a relaxed state. The patient doesn’t take an active role in their treatment, and results are provided solely by the specialist’s skillset.

This has some benefits.

First, it’s an outpatient service that doesn’t take much time. You schedule an appointment, show up, and treatments are typically finished within a matter of minutes after your first visit. The first visit can take up to an hour due to the need for paperwork and consultation before treatment is provided.

Then, there’s the fact that relief is almost immediately provided. If you’re receiving chiropractic treatment for the right reasons, you should walk out with some degree of relief every time you go.

Chiropractic care also doesn’t try to change your life outside of the treatment. You go, you receive treatment, and you go on with your life.

However, that doesn’t mean that chiropractic care is the best option, or even a good option in some cases.

While chiropractic care is in an outpatient office setting, it’s not a standardized medical treatment in other settings. You don’t have many options for finding insurance that covers it, most sports clubs don’t provide it or have specialists on hand, etc. It’s a service you’ll seek out on your own and pay for.

Also, while treatment typically provides very fast results, those results aren’t long-lasting. You have to continue going to a chiropractor indefinitely in most cases. It doesn’t resolve the issue.

On top of that, a chiropractor doesn’t give you the tools to manage any ongoing pain for yourself. If you like the results you’re getting, you have to keep going back.

In some cases, this can be a great solution. Such as when you are suffering from something that won’t go away and there’s not much you can do about it.

What is a Physical Therapist?

A physical therapist is similar to a chiropractor. Their job is to help you get over the pain and recover from injuries. However, they take a much different approach.

Where a chiropractor provides a service based on fast results, a physical therapist’s goal is typically to address the root issue.

This means that it might not be an immediate solution, but over time, you will start to see results that don’t go away. By addressing the root problem, the issue can be resolved entirely in many cases.

In situations where the problem simply can’t be addressed at its root and will remain persistent in the foreseeable future, physical therapists don’t just get you to come in for indefinite treatment. Instead, they take the approach of a teacher.

A physical therapist will not only try to relieve your pain during treatment, but they’ll also teach you exercises and practices you can do at home to relieve your pain, continue improving your results, etc.

This means that even if your issue can’t be resolved in the short term, you can still experience long-term relief without indefinite appointments. Even if you’ll eventually be just fine, learning these basic at-home treatments helps prepare you for any injuries that occur in the future.

Most of this stems from the core foundation of physical therapy being focused on mobility and flexibility while triggering the body’s natural healing response. It consists of a lot of targeted stretches and exercises that help rebuild the body rather than just relieve symptoms of a bigger issue.

That focus also helps make physical therapy suitable for a wider range of patients. It’s not just for people who suffer major injuries. Athletes use it to recover faster, the elderly use it to regain their balance and mobility as they age, and lots of people use physical therapy after surgery to help them heal faster and regain full mobility.

Finally, physical therapists are often part of a larger source of help. Not only will you find them in a variety of fields, such as sports programs, schools, hospitals, and more, but they are often part of a team. This means that you’ll usually get more in-depth guidance in a variety of aspects. Not just stretches and exercises.

Oftentimes, you’ll have access to a dietitian who can help you redevelop your diet habits to facilitate a healthier life, gain access to different types of physical therapy more focused on your situation, and more.

Physical Therapist VS Chiropractor: The Best Choice for You

When comparing aphysical therapist VS a chiropractor, in most cases, physiotherapy provides more benefits.

It’s not as fast, and you will be an active part of your healing journey. However, they treat a much wider variety of issues, take a more customized approach, help you continue your healing on your own, and often provide you with access to other services.

Addressing the root cause of the problem and learning the skills to improve your health for a lifetime is almost always the better option in comparison to fast results that go away over time.

Get Customized Physical Therapy Services from Expert Manual Therapy

If you’re suffering from chronic pain, trying to heal from an injury, or simply want to improve your mobility and flexibility, we have a variety of physical therapy services that are completely custom-tailored to your unique needs.

And if you’re looking for professional physical therapy in Austin, TX you came to the right place. Contact Expert Manual Therapy for a custom recovery plan today.

Arthritis is often a debilitating condition regardless of its severity. Simple tasks become so difficult to handle and painful after a while that you don’t want to do them.

There are a lot of pharmaceuticals designed to help you with arthritis, but those almost always have side effects or other issues you need to worry about. What if we could offer you a genuine solution that didn’t have all those strings attached?

Let’s see if physical therapy can help you with arthritis.

Does Physical Therapy Help with Arthritis?

Getting straight to the point, yes. Physical therapy can help with arthritis and get you back to normal life.

However, it’s a bit more complicated than simply going to therapy and expecting your arthritis to go away. While it’s an effective treatment, it’s a process just like any other long-term support for chronic pain.

How Does Physical Therapy Help with Arthritis?

Arthritis is a unique type of condition. It’s typically caused by the cartilage in joints being broken down over time, and the joints become less mobile. This can happen for a variety of reasons including obesity, previous injuries to the affected area, auto-immune diseases, and more.

Physical therapy can’t repair that cartilage, but it does help get rid of inflammation.

Inflammation, while not always visible, is a form of swelling. It’s supposed to be a positive thing. It provides a layer of protection for injured joints and body parts.

However, when that swelling stays around too long, or it gets out of control, it can cause debilitating pain by pushing on the injury every time you move.

This is what causes most arthritis pain. Inflammation puts pressure on joints that are already damaged, and rather than offering a layer of protection, it creates a painful experience every time you try to move the affected joint.

Physical therapy focuses on reducing that inflammation by working the affected joint in a way that doesn’t make the problem worse but stretches the joint and reduces the amount of swelling. As the inflammation goes down, the pain subsides.

What Should You Expect Physical Therapy to Be Like?

With physical therapy treatments, you won’t be going into a doctor’s office and walking out with tons of prescriptions. Instead, the treatment consists of exercises.

The exact exercises you can expect to do will vary dramatically depending on what part of your body is being treated, but the general approach is a variety of stretches.

These stretches are designed to gently and slowly ease the joint into movement, allowing it to work itself. This does two things: first, it triggers the body’s natural healing response and reduces inflammation naturally.

Second, it helps the joints strengthen and become more flexible, which helps restore mobility to the joints over time.

There might also be various strength-building exercises added to your treatment plan if the therapist you’re working with deems them appropriate. Simple exercises such as lifting weights, pushing or pulling heavier objects, and similar exercises are commonly used.

These exercises help strengthen the joints, but because you’re being guided by a professional, these exercises can be done with minimal pain or risk of further injury.

However, physical therapy isn’t just a bunch of stretches and exercises. Depending on your needs, it encompasses far more than that.

Part of your physical therapy routine will likely include dietary monitoring and guidance. Many of the foods you eat can contribute to inflammation, while simply making a few changes can actively work to reduce inflammation alongside the use of exercise.

As part of a full wellness program, you’ll also be instructed to start daily activities and habits that can help reduce the pain, drop negative habits that make it more likely for your arthritis to act up such as drinking or smoking, and other things will be implemented to create a full, comprehensive, treatment plan.

How Long Does Physical Therapy Take to Work?

As we said, physical therapy isn’t a treatment that tries to mask the problem as many pharmaceutical options do instantly. It’s a process that aims to solve the core issue using the body’s natural ability to heal itself. As such, it takes time.

Patients can expect immediate relief after each therapy session, but long-lasting change takes time and effort. Since arthritis doesn’t simply go away, this particular form of treatment might even be indefinite or periodically necessary to restart depending on how well you maintain the results.

Can I Do Physical Therapy at Home?

Physical therapy can help with arthritis even if you do it at home. At-home routines are extremely common in these treatments. You’ll likely be given in-depth instructions on what to do at home to help further your progress and maintain the results you’ve achieved.

Things such as simple stretches you can do periodically are commonly taught to patients so they can do them without supervision.

However, it’s important to go to physical therapy in the first place. Not only is that how you get professional guidance for what you can do at home, but the treatments performed during in-person therapy sessions must be supervised to ensure they’re being done properly.

Overexerting the joints, doing the exercises improperly, or otherwise making common mistakes when handling it alone can make the situation far worse.

Does Physical Therapy for Arthritis Pain Provide Other Benefits?

While a patient seeking arthritis relief will have a treatment plan designed to handle arthritis, other benefits naturally come along with going to physical therapy.

Primarily, the natural increase in flexibility, mobility, and joint strength will naturally make further injuries or problems less likely.

The general dietary and lifestyle guidance provided as needed also promotes a higher degree of general wellness. From helping promote better weight management to enforcing the need to stop negative habits such as smoking and drinking, many benefits can stem from your arthritis treatment plan.

Where to Get Physical Therapy Treatment for Arthritis

Now that you understand how physical therapy can help with arthritis, it’s crucial to find the best physiotherapy clinic in Austin, TX.

If you’re suffering from arthritis and want to reclaim your life, Expert Manual Therapy is the perfect choice for you.

Our team will create a custom treatment plan based on your needs, limitations, and unique situation. Our talented professionals will guide you on your road to arthritis pain relief.

Book your first appointment with Expert Manual Therapy today.

Physical therapy is often looked at as something that’s only worthwhile when you’re recovering from a major injury. While it is used for that very commonly, there are also several other reasons you might need to consider physical therapy, and they’re not always injury-related. This is especially true for athletes. Physical therapy might be a game-changer for your career if you’re an athletic individual. Here are 8 benefits of physical therapy for athletes to give you more of an understanding of what you’re missing out on. Let’s dive in!

1: Performance Enhancement

Physical therapy can provide a substantial benefit to your training efforts. While you likely have athletic coaches guiding you through fitness routines, those are targeted specifically to make you more effective in the sport you’re participating in.

Physical therapy focuses on a well-rounded approach to wellness where experts gauge your health needs in various areas, identify weak points you might not even be aware of, and then leverage unique, proven, exercises to strengthen those weaknesses for better overall health. This supplements the training you’re already doing to increase your speed, agility, and strength in ways you otherwise wouldn’t even know was possible.

2: Lowered Inflammation

Inflammation is a major problem for nearly every athlete. With the sheer amount of rough physical activity you’re doing, it’s a certainty that you’ll deal with inflammation far more often than the average person. Inflammation is not only uncomfortable and bad for your performance, but it can also lead to you getting injured more often. Anything that lowers your mobility or makes it uncomfortable to perform at your highest capability can lead to accidents on the field that turn into major injuries. Luckily, one of the core focuses of physical therapy for athletes is reducing inflammation since it’s a major part of pain relief. We can teach you exercise to incorporate into your daily training routine to lower inflammation, give you dietary guidance, and provide you with services designed to lower inflammation and keep you in peak shape.

3: Pain Reduction

This often has to do with the inflammation that we talked about, but that’s not always the case. Even if your pain comes from a strained ligament or muscle, or even if you have an old injury that flares up under certain conditions, physical therapy can help. Often, those persistent sources of pain can be dealt with by simply using targeted stretches to work the affected body part and help initiate its natural healing process.

4: Less Dependency on Medication

Medications can be extremely useful, and following a doctor’s orders is always crucial, but a common issue with athletes is an over-dependency on medications due to the persistent pain and fatigue that can come with such an athletic lifestyle. This sort of dependency can have negative side effects that not only impact your sport but can also spill over into other aspects of your everyday life. Since so much of physical therapy focuses on pain prevention and relief, it often removes the need for consistent medication usage. This lowers the chances of dependency and allows you to live a more naturally active life.

5: Increased Balance

One of the most common uses for various types of physical therapy outside of treating injuries or helping athletes is to help people struggling with balance-related challenges. Usually, this includes the elderly, disabled, and those who have suffered traumatic, life-changing injuries, but it can also be extremely beneficial to athletes. While you’re training to be explosive on the field, you might not focus on maintaining your sense of balance as well. This can be an issue because it makes you more likely to injure yourself or underperform. Balance-related physical therapy exercises can take care of that.

6: Dietary Guidance

What you put in your body affects everything you do. It can increase inflammation which makes it more difficult to perform at your best, decrease the effectiveness of your training, and leave you drained during the worst moments. Hopefully, you’ve developed a diet that helps with your athletic performance already, but the benefit of physical therapy for athletes is that it can help you withdietary guidance that helps you avoid common pitfalls, as well.

7: Injury Prevention

Injuries happen in sports, and it’s unlikely that you’ll go your entire lifetime without experiencing a relatively severe injury. However, physical therapy can prevent you from experiencing injuries as often. This is mostly due to the overall focus on wellness, flexibility, balance, and creating a healthy body that functions properly. In many ways, physical therapy can mean the difference between a slip on the field being a minor inconvenience and some bench time, or a traumatic event requiring extensive downtime.

8: Faster Recovery

When you do get hurt, there are several issues you have to deal with. First, you’re taken off the field and unable to perform until you’re patched up and ready to do so safely. Then, even your personal life is affected, because, despite the time off from your sport, you’re still not in good enough shape to properly enjoy life.

Beyond that, you also have to consider that injuries tend to snowball. Having to sit on the sidelines for weeks, or even months, leads to physical decline that lowers your overall ability to perform when you do get to go back to doing what you love. The longer you’re out, the worse it gets. Physical therapy is most commonly used to help people from all walks of life, not just athletes, to recover from their injuries and regain the physical capabilities they had before the injury occurred. You can not only get back on your feet faster and back to enjoying life, but you can do so while maintaining as much of your physical capabilities and overall health as possible so your return is a great one.

Where to Get Physical Therapy Services for Athletes

After exploring these benefits of physical therapy for athletes, it’s time for you to find the perfect clinic that can meet your needs. Whether you’re trying to recover from a complicated injury as fast as possible, or you simply want to increase your level of wellness to be a more well-rounded athlete, Expert Manual Therapy can help. Our manual therapy clinic in Austin has experienced staff who can help you with everything we’ve discussed here and more with precision-targeted treatment solutions.Get in touch with us today.

Whether you’ve been through a traumatic car accident, severely tore a ligament while playing your favorite sport, or simply experienced an age-related fall, you know that injuries tend to impact your life long after you’ve been treated for them.

Getting back into your normal routine and enjoying an active lifestyle doesn’t have to be impossible, though. With a bit of help and a few daily practices, you can reclaim your life.

Here are 8 tips from our experts to help you get active after an injury.

1: Follow All Doctor Recommendations Precisely

The first thing you can do to return to an active life is follow the doctor’s instructions to the T after you receive treatment.

It’s common for patients to feel a little better and skip certain parts of the healing process, such as recommended therapy sessions, follow-up visits, or movement restrictions.

This often makes the healing process much more difficult, and it can make the situation worse. Simply following instructions post-surgery, treatment, or doctor visits can go a long way toward getting you back on your feet in a reasonable period.

2: Don’t Overexert Yourself

If you lived an active lifestyle before your injury, we know that it feels nearly impossible not to push yourself as hard as possible to get back to normal. It’s a habit, and it has likely been your lifestyle for a long time.

However, your drive and determination can work against you in this case.

You never want to push yourself so hard to recover that you end up causing another injury or re-injuring yourself. While your goal is to get better faster, you can end up in a lot more pain with a lot longer to go before you’re ready to get active, again.

Knowing how far is too far can be difficult, as well. Especially since you’ll start feeling stronger quickly once you start a proper recovery program. However, we have a solution for that, which we’ll talk about later.

3: Move as Much as Possible

With recovery, a lot of your ability to succeed will come down to balance. You don’t want to overwork yourself or ignore a doctor’s orders, but you also don’t want to simply lay on the couch and watch the world go by hoping you’ll feel better soon.

Within the restrictions your medical team has given you, you want to keep your body moving as much as you can. That can be as little as doing some seated stretches and slowly working your way up to more normal daily tasks, or it can mean going through a daily workout routine. It all depends on your unique circumstances.

This helps work the muscles to keep you in shape, but it also stimulates healing and gets you back to normal a lot faster than just lying around.

4: Use the Right Exercises

Working and stretching your muscles is crucial to your recovery, but you need to do the right ones if you want to see meaningful results.

You can use a vast variety of exercises to target core problem areas and strengthen supporting muscles without putting undue stress on your injury.

If you can leverage those exercises in your favor, you can help your body strengthen itself in ways that mitigate the injury’s impact on your day-to-day life. This is often used to help with chronic back pain.

For example, while the lower back might be weaker from an injury and cause pain, therapists often recommend exercises that strengthen the supporting muscles to alleviate stress on the lower back.

5: Manage Your Diet

Your diet might not have anything to do with your injury, but it can have a lot to do with your recovery.

In general, certain foods and drinks can increase inflammation and cause more pain and discomfort. If that happens, you’re less likely to be able to exercise appropriately to facilitate healing, and other aspects of your life will be impacted.

If you’re already an extremely athletic person, your eating habits might be even more important to look at. You likely eat a more calorie-dense diet to help with your daily routine, but if you suddenly can’t exercise as much, continuing that high-calorie diet can be problematic. Weight gain can make exercising more difficult, apply more pressure to the injury increase your pain, etc.

This isn’t always the case, but your diet does need to be considered.

6: Focus on Inflammation Reduction

Injuries tend to cause a lot of inflammation and swelling whether it’s visible or not. One of the best ways to help reduce this is the liberal use of ice on the affected body part. Especially early in the healing process.

When you get done stretching, finish your therapy appointment, or just get off a long day of work, wrap an ice pack in a cloth or paper towel, and apply it to the affected area for 15 minutes to half an hour.

7: Stay Positive

It’s easy to start feeling down when your life is thrown for a loop, but your mindset does have an impact on your body’s ability to heal.

Try to remember that you’re going to get better, and when you start feeling negative, distract yourself with something positive you enjoy that is within your physical limits.

8: Sign Up for Manual Therapy

Finally, you don’t have to do this alone, and it’s best that you don’t.

Whether your doctor recommends physical therapy, or you notice that an ongoing problem simply isn’t going away, therapy can be the best way to get back to an active lifestyle.

Manual therapists can help you in a variety of ways. You’ll receive guided, professionally designed physical therapy treatments that target the core problem, dietary guidance, and more in a safe environment. You don’t have to worry about doing too much or too little, doing the wrong exercises, or accidentally making your problem worse.

Contact Expert Manual Therapy Today

Getting active after an injury is a difficult process, but manual therapy can help. As long as you have the right therapist.

Expert Manual Therapy is home to qualified experts based in Austin, TX, who not only help you recover but also prioritize your safety and comfort while doing so. We can help you recover from various injuries, maintain your dietary needs, and learn preventative measures that will keep you on your feet in the future.

Contact Expert Manual Therapy today.
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When you’re injured, whether it’s a serious injury or a simple sprain or over-exertion, your primary goal is to heal and get back to your normal life. For many, that typically means taking a bunch of medications and lying around until their bodies take care of it.

That’s often not the right way to go about it.

You can speed up your recovery, and get better, healthier, results with some basic exercises.

Since lower back pain is such a common problem with people from all walks of life and at all ages, we’re going to share 10 of the best physiotherapy exercises for lower back pain that you can start using at home, today.

Let’s get started.

1: Stretch Your Hamstrings

Before we get to the back, it’s best to deal with your posture. For this, stretching your hamstrings is important. It’s also fairly easy to do despite your back pain.

Sit down with both your legs extended in front of you, bring one foot into the thigh of your other extended leg, and then touch your toes on the extended leg.

This will strengthen the muscles connecting your legs to your back and prevent posture problems from straining your back further.

2: Planks

This is an easy, low-strain exercise you can do just about anywhere. Again, this doesn’t focus directly on the back. Instead, it focuses on the supporting muscles. In this case, your abs get a workout.

To do this, just lay face down on the floor, prop your forearms up as a support, and raise yourself onto your toes. This is like a pushup, but you rest your forearms on the floor, keep your torso straight, and hold the lifted position.

3: Crunches

Crunches can help with your back pain because they strengthen your abs. However, it’s important to be careful and not push it.

Also, it’s best to do them on an exercise ball with your back and your feet on the floor. This will keep your back from engaging and overstressing itself while still strengthening your abs.

4: Extending the Back Muscles

Now, we’ll dig into some exercises that directly target the back. First, you can do an “extension”. This is simply laying flat on your back with your body rigid and then lifting your torso into the air.

It’s important not to push it too far at first depending on the extent of your injury, but it stretches the back muscles and helps them heal gradually.

5: Side Bends

Another simple back exercise, you can simply stand up straight, and then bend your upper body to one side without rotating your hips or torso.

6: Sitting Rotations

Here’s a very light back pain exercise you can do while sitting at your desk: simply sit up straight, and then turn your upper body side to side.

This is a low-impact exercise that will stretch the back muscles without overexerting them, and it’s great in work settings and other places where you can’t just start a normal exercise routine.

7: Crunches with Elevated Feet

For an easier version of crunches, you can place your feet on an exercise ball while doing normal floor crunches. Since the ball moves and elevates the feet, less stress is put on the spine.

8: Bicycle Stretches

This simple exercise consists of lying on your back raising your legs and pretending you’re pedaling a bicycle. Don’t do it fast. The goal is to control your muscles. You shouldn’t feel any back pain, but you’ll strengthen supporting muscles considerably over time.

9: Swimming

This physiotherapy exercise for lower back pain isn’t possible for everyone, and it’s not always included in physiotherapy routines, but if you have access to a pool, swimming is great for back pain.

The weightlessness you feel in water alleviates all stress from your back, but you can stretch the muscles extremely well to strengthen and loosen them. Of course, if your back is injured, you shouldn’t swim alone.

10: Knee-to-Chest Stretches

This one can be more difficult if you don’t stretch regularly, but it does help the muscles that support your back and stretch the lower back itself.

Lay flat on your back, lift one leg, and pull it as close to your chest as you comfortably can.

How These Exercises Help with Back Pain

These physiotherapy exercises for lower back pain don’t focus on the back for the most part. That’s for a good reason. If you’re injured or suffering from chronic pain, directly targeting your back on your own might make it worse.

Instead, these exercises alleviate pain by strengthening the core muscles that support the lower back. By giving the lower back more support, it’s less likely to move in a manner that overstresses it, and it can more effectively heal.

It’s also important to note that you can avoid a lot of lower back pain not only with these exercises but also by practicing preventative care.

Most back pain problems stem from work-related activities when you don’t lift things or bend over properly.

Focusing on your posture and maintaining good posture throughout such movements can greatly reduce the need for all these exercises.

Get Professional Help Alleviating Your Back Pain

Physiotherapy exercises for lower back pain that we listed are great at-home exercises that will work wonders for minor back pain, and they can prevent your back pain from becoming a bigger issue.

However, if you’re suffering from serious pain, or your pain doesn’t seem to go away, you need professional help.

A professional physiotherapist can not only do more exercises and offer more lifestyle guidance than this list, but they can also monitor your physical therapy and help you perform exercises more efficiently to prevent making the problem worse with improper form or over-exertion.

If you are looking for the best physiotherapy clinic in Austin our team got you covered! We provide top-tier physiotherapy services to the Austin, TX area, and we can help alleviate your chronic back pain, recover from injuries, and more.

Contact Expert Manual Therapy today and book your first appointment!

When you’re injured or subjected to a surgery or condition that greatly impacts your ability to live normally, life kind of loses its spark for a while. Whether you’re in a lot of pain, or you simply can’t make your body keep up with your lifestyle, it’s never a positive experience. You want to get past that period as fast as possible without worrying about further issues developing.

For many, the first course of action is to take medications that vary in effectiveness and risk, rely on procedures that can have their negative side effects, and more, but there’s another option.

In many circumstances, physiotherapy is a great way to boost your recovery and help you reclaim your life.

Today, we’re going to go over 8 reasons why you should choose physiotherapy whether you’re dealing with injuries, the effects of advanced age, conditions, surgery recoveries, and more.

1: Avoid Unnecessary Medications

Medications are extremely helpful, and in many cases, they are necessary to help with the healing process. So, we’re not telling you to ignore all your prescriptions and only try physiotherapy. In some cases, that can be dangerous.

However, there is a modern trend where medications are used for problems, they’re really not necessary for, and beyond having immediate negative side effects, they can also lead to issues such as addiction and future drug abuse. This is a major part of the modern opioid epidemic.

Physiotherapy can provide you with targeted, natural, healing by helping your body rebuild itself essentially. In cases where medication is optional, or you’re able to go without it but still need to focus on healing, physiotherapy can help you get through your recovery quickly without going down the medicinal rabbit hole.

2: Get Off Dangerous Medications Faster

Physiotherapy isn’t magic. Pain doesn’t just disappear when you start physiotherapy, and you might still need to use prescribed medications while you’re recovering to mask the pain or symptoms of your injury or illness. However, that’s what they’re typically doing. Masking the symptoms.

Physiotherapy has you work with trained professionals to target the root cause of the problem and treat it directly via movement triggering your body’s natural healing response. So, even if you need to be on a particularly risky medication, you can deal with the core problem faster and end your dependency on the medication before it becomes an entirely different issue.

In fact, this is where many medicine-related problems start. The medicine works well, but because the root problem isn’t resolved, patients stay on medications longer than they need to and build a dependency.

3: Safe Recovery from Major Surgeries

After many types of surgeries, it’s not safe for you to start a normal fitness regimen for a while. You can’t have heart surgery or a knee transplant and immediately hit the gym the next day. However, you don’t want to just sit around resting for months, either.

Your muscles will degenerate, and you’ll have a massive hill to climb in terms of getting back into good shape and enjoying life.

Physiotherapy can be a great way to maintain your body during that period while a trained professional ensures you do it in a safe manner.

4: Prevent the Worsening of Existing Conditions

Some conditions, such as musculoskeletal diseases, can continuously degenerate your body throughout your lifetime. They’re not entirely curable, but physiotherapy can help prevent such conditions from getting worse, slow them down, and generally help you live a more mobile and active life for far longer than you would if you just let it progress without intervention.

5: Deal with the Effects of Old Age

We all get old, and unfortunately, age does tend to take its toll on our bodies at a certain point. Physiotherapy can help you maximize your physical potential in old age by keeping your body in peak shape and strengthening it to prevent injuries or degradation that prevent you from moving as well as you used to.

This type of therapy can help older people maintain their balance to avoid falls, help prevent serious injuries from occurring when they do fall, and help them keep their stamina well into their advanced years.

6: Prevent Future Injuries

In the same way, physiotherapy can help prevent older people from suffering severe injuries when they fall, it can also help athletes or other very active people from experiencing as many injuries in their day-to-day activities.

Since physiotherapy helps with so many aspects of physical health, it helps active individuals build their body’s resistance to injuries so they can take the abuse and keep going instead of constantly being injured doing what they love.

7: Better Flexibility and Posture

Flexibility and posture are two key factors in one’s physical health and maintaining one’s physical health, but many people lack one or the other.

Posture affects many different aspects of life. Poor posture can lead to back problems, more frequent injuries when lifting heavy loads or moving certain ways, and various other issues with serious consequences in the long term.

Flexibility helps you manipulate your body more effectively, and it reduces the chance of you dealing with an injury since your joints are able to move far more easily than they would if you weren’t flexible.

Both of these are core parts of most physiotherapy treatments.

8: Learn to Work with Knee and Hip Replacements

Getting a knee or hip replacement can be both a great experience and a negative one. It’s great because you get to move past the problems you had, but it also requires you to learn to move effectively again with a foreign object in your body. That’s not as easy as it sounds.

Physiotherapy can help you prepare for that pre-operation, and it can help you adjust to it after you’ve had the operation and are getting through that initial awkward period.

Sign Up for Physiotherapy with Expert Manual Therapy

If you need help strengthening your body, recovering from an injury or surgery, or just adjusting to changes in your body due to age or joint replacements, you should choose physiotherapy.

And you should choose only the best for your body. Here at Expert Manual Therapy, we make sure to make a custom plan for each client’s needs, ensuring a personalized and effective therapy experience tailored to your unique health goals and lifestyle.

We specialize in providing exceptional physiotherapy, manual therapy, therapeutic exercises, and more.

Book an appointment with Expert Manual Therapy today.