Key Benefits Of Sports Physical Therapy For Athletes In Austin

Athletes of all ages, shapes, and sizes are prone to injuries and get hurt. After getting injured, athletes must rehabilitate the injury and condition their bodies to prevent similar re-injury.

This is where an advanced sports physical therapist who knows how to provide sports therapy in Austin comes into the picture. 

Sports physical therapy can help improve your overall athletic performance in different ways. Here is a list of top benefits of Sports Physical Therapy especially for athletes.

THE TOP BENEFITS OF SPORTS PHYSICAL THERAPY

1. IMPROVED RANGE OF MOTION

In live athletics, joints are often taken to the very edge of the tissue’s strength. This is where injured tissues can easily be torn or injured. When an athlete has to return to a sport, an advanced sports physical therapist must take their patient to the extreme to prepare the tissue for live athletics. In sports physical therapy, the therapists push an athlete’s joints to their very end and ensure there is no pain, resistance, laxity, or apprehension, which helps improve an athlete’s full range of motion.

2. NEUROMUSCULAR CONTROL

Sports physical therapy is used for the better coordination of various body parts to work together. During neuromuscular coordination, the main focus is on the movements of the joints by the muscles, tendons, and nerves. By doing this, the injured athlete steadily prepares to return to sports activities by increasing movement speed during exercises and progressively adding weight.

3. TECHNIQUE

Most non-sports physical therapists neglect the significance of ensuring athletes know how to position or move their bodies properly to complete an exercise or task. But small details about positioning and technique can help an athlete align their body correctly to load proper tissue (bone, tendons, muscles), unload the wrong tissue, conserve energy and enhance movement efficiency and performance. During a sports physical therapy session, it is very important for a therapist to let the athlete know about the correct technique.

4. MUSCLE BALANCING

Athletes generally move in all directions to perfect their sport and play at a high level. This can lead to repetitive training. When this happens, emphasized muscles can have an overload as compared to their counterpart, becoming the dominant muscle group. With sport-specific training, athletes also need to train muscle groups to balance the load on joints and tendons and create synergy in the body to avoid injury and return to live athletics.

5. POWER, STRENGTH, AND SPEED

Largely depending on an athlete’s specific sport, many different power, strength, and speed combinations are required for the best performance. To maintain their muscular strength and size (hypertrophy) to the maximum, athletes must load their muscles with heavier weights, increase their sets and reduce the repetitions per set. Maximum power generally, is the ability to move weight over a distance in the shortest possible time. Athletes are mostly required to be challenged to work as quickly as possible against a resistance to build their power. Speed is the ability to move the body (or body parts) as rapidly as possible. Most sports require the ability to move quickly, and each patient requires individual exercises during a sports physical therapy session to coordinate body parts where there is a stable platform that generates speed.

6. JOINT TORQUE

Rotational load at high velocity is most important for return to almost any sport. Generating and controlling this rotational force over joints and body parts is one of the main focuses of sports physical therapy that benefits athletes. This generally includes manual therapy and functional exercise progression, starting with single-plane movements and progressing to multi-plan and multi-joint motions.

7. PREPARE ATHLETE FOR COACHING

When sports physical therapy is almost complete, the athlete should be returning to practice and coaching. This crossover of sports physical therapy and live athletics allows the athlete to make sure they can return to their sport without any new symptoms. Working out the last areas of pain or tightness will ensure a safe return to coaches who expect to have an athlete ready to perform at their best.

HELPING YOU GET BACK TO YOUR SPORT WITH IMPROVED PERFORMANCE

At Medicine In Motion, we believe injuries shouldn’t stop you from playing a sport you love the most. But most injuries do not just go away on their own. Sports physical therapy can help you heal from the injury, improve your range of motion, enhance your technique, and help you regain the power, strength, and speed you need to succeed at your sport again. Our sports physical therapists can help you accomplish your goals.

Contact us today if you are ready to get back to the sport you love.