Physiotherapists and Athletic Therapists utilize a comprehensive approach to pain management that considers the entire body, allowing for tailored treatment plans that address the root cause of your discomfort.
Do you suffer from chronic and acute pain caused by injury or a medical condition? If so, it might be time to seek treatment from a Physiotherapist or Athletic therapist for your symptoms. At Inertia Physio+, our Physiotherapy and Athletic Therapy team are trained in reducing and eliminating pain through manual therapy – a form of physical treatment that is used to treat a number of common mobility issues such as stiffness, injury, muscle tension, and weakness, without the use of machines. Manual therapy treatments use a whole-body approach to treating your pain through hand pressure and natural movements. It allows therapists to focus on the cause of the problem by relaxing tense muscles and joints in order to improve motion while reducing pain. Our therapists combine manual therapy with exercise therapy and at times, forms of dry needling, acupuncture or use of home self-treatment, in order to ensure you receive results! Let us explore more of these techniques in detail to help you understand how they work to eliminate pain and keep your body in motion.
The myofascial tissue is a connective tissue that extends throughout your body and surrounds and supports the muscles. Certain trauma and inflammatory responses can create myofascial restrictions, resulting in chronic pain. This hands-on technique is very effective at eliminating any associated pain and restoring motion to the myofascial connective tissue.
Kinks and tight spots that form in our muscles can cause intense pain and stiffness in other parts of the body. Various trigger-point release exercises can be utilized to target specific areas and alleviate the source of pain. Manual cycles of isolated pressure and release techniques can also be applied to release further constricted areas.
This type of manual treatment applies pressure to the soft tissues of the body such as the muscles, ligaments, and tendons. It’s designed to relax any stiff muscles, increase overall circulation to the area, and break up any scar tissue.
Using passive body positioning, a therapist can release muscle and connective tissue spasms from all areas of the body. The therapist will combine pressure on the trigger point with a position of ease that gives slack to the muscle in order to allow release with minimal to no pain. In this way, the Physiotherapist or Athletic Therapist will cause relaxation to the area helping to resolve pain, tension, and inflammation.
Therapists also can use your muscle’s own energy to help relax and lengthen the muscles and normalize joint movement. By creating a voluntary contraction of the patient’s muscles against a resistive force provided by the therapist, this technique allows specific physiological mechanisms to take place that results in a reflexive muscular relaxation. This can helps lengthen postural muscles that are often prone to shortening and relax muscles that have become tight due to overuse or spasm as a result of an injury. Muscle energy technique can be used not only to lengthen tight muscles but also reset the position of joints, particularly in the spine and sacroiliac joints. It can help regain function and activation in muscles surrounding the joints that they affect.
Mobilization is another popular manual therapy technique. Through rhythmic oscillation and pressure applied to affected body parts, a therapist can help to improve functionality, mobility and reduce overall pain in the area. Three of the most common mobilization methods are general joint mobilization, Mulligan mobilization with movement and Neural Mobilization techniques. Joint mobilization is the movement of one bone past the other bone with which it forms a joint. Joint mobilization is done in specific directions in order to improve specific physiological ranges of motion. It can be done in one of 5 grades, with grades 1-4 being the most common at slower speeds and grade 5 being the high-velocity joint manipulation. Mulligan mobilization with movement is a technique where the therapist both mobilizes the joint and facilitates either passive, therapist-assisted range of motion or active patient range of motion. Both of these forms of mobilization affect the joints in a positive way. Neural mobility, on the other hand, is a technique that affects the tension of nerves and their ability to glide through their pathways free of restriction. In this way, the nerves are able to transmit messages from the brain to muscles appropriately and allow the muscle to receive the proper message and therefore have more efficient action and maintain a stable resting length (not too tight or too long). This can reduce nerve pain and improve range of motion.
If you suffer from sports injuries, carpal tunnel, pulled muscles, and back pain, therapists can also use two forms of stretching to treat pain in those areas. Soft Tissue Release is a combination of pressure in the muscle along with a passive stretch of the muscle. It can be more effective than stretching alone because of the combination of pressure with stretch. It is typically done with a timing of 2 second holds in the stretch, followed by removal of stretch. It can allow certain structures within the muscles to reset and allow the muscle to stay more permanently in an elongated state. Active Isolated Stretching is similar in the timing that is used and the addition followed by the removal of stretch. The recommendation is 12 x 2 seconds for any stretch. It works by actively contracting the opposite muscle to help the target muscle relax before stretching. This form of stretching improves flexibility, circulation and promotes growth and repair.
Craniosacral therapy is a specialized form of therapy that is very gentle generally and targets the fascia throughout the body and dura around the brain and spinal cord. It combines this fascial and dual release with subtle mobilization of the bones that make up the skull and regulation of the rhythm that is created by the flow of cerebrospinal fluid.
As you can see, manual therapy is very effective at treating joint, muscle and nerve pain while improving mobility and range of motion. Our therapists are highly trained in all of these techniques to ensure that we can meet your body’s needs and provide relief, no matter what type of tissue is causing the problem. If you suffer from muscle or joint pain, migraines, fibromyalgia, or even TMJ, our team of Physiotherapists and Athletic Therapists can help with manual therapy to get you back on your feet. Contact us today at Inertia Physio+ to learn more about how we use manual therapy treatments and exercise therapy to restore normal mobility and provide system relief in acute and chronic pain conditions.
