If you have ever suffered from back pain, then you will know how debilitating disease and how much you want to find a solution for it to never come back. One way to achieve that is free sports therapy, which is a very specific form of physical therapy period before you start seeing a sports therapist such as Michael Volitich, however, it is important that you discuss your issues with a medical professional to determine that sports therapy is suitable for you.
Michael Volitich on What Sports Therapy Can Do for You
There are five specific things that sports therapy can do for you if you suffer from back pain:
- It can teach you the correct body mechanics.
- It can recommend the correct posture for you.
- It can teach you targeted exercises that make you more flexible and that strengthen your core muscles, focusing on your lower back and your abdominals.
- It can help you to control your weight.
- It can provide you with manual therapy exercises.
Learning about proper body mechanics is very important because it can teach you how to keep your spine healthy without having to rely on pharmaceutical medication. A sports therapists will teach you how to look after your back and how to handle any recurrent pain. You will learn to understand the way you move during your various activities, but also on how you stand, sit, lift, and bend. In fact, a sports therapist will even look at the way you sleep.
A good sports therapist will also recommend a proper posture for you. In almost all cases of back pain, the real problem is that people do not stand correctly. They often experience pain on one side of the back and overcompensate by bending, thereby making the other side of the back sore, effectively trapping them in a never ending cycle. Good posture, be that during sitting, standing, moving, or sleeping, is absolutely essential to maintaining the health of the back.
Sports therapists are different from physical therapists in a such that they Focus very much on the science of intensive movement. Hence, they will not solely provide you with simple stretching and strengthening exercises, they will more likely actually write a fitness program for you that includes both muscle workouts and cardiovascular workouts. Through their work you will learn to become more flexible as well as stronger, thereby avoiding further injuries to your back and other muscles.
Of Interest is the fact that sports therapists also have a strong focus on Weight Control. Many people will suffer from back then do so because they are overweight. By focusing on sports and nutrition, a sports therapist will ensure that people can achieve a healthy weight and maintain it afterwards as well. This may require a full lifestyle change.
Last but not least, sports therapists are therapists, which means that they will also offer a manual therapy to their patients. This includes massages and other techniques that will help alleviate the immediate pain.