Rest, Medication, Surgery, these are common considerations for people who are injured or in pain. Increasingly, people are turning to a physical therapist for the treatment of their musculoskeletal injuries and it makes sense. Physical therapy is often a more effective, cheaper, and conservative approach to an injury than the alternatives. But if your idea of physical therapy is what you have seen on TV on in the movies, you might think that physical therapy is just exercise.
The reality is physical therapists use exercise to help their patients reach their goals. But exercise is only one tool available to a physical therapist and just like a hammer isn’t much help to a contractor looking to cut wood, physical therapists are skilled at determining what tool best suits each patient’s unique challenges and the presentation of their current condition. Physical Therapy isn’t just exercise for a variety of reasons, but our top 5 reasons are below.
Top 5 Reasons why Physical Therapy Isn’t Just Exercise:
- Targeted Exercises are Not the same as general strength (therapeutic activities)
When a Physical therapist talks about “exercise” there are really two different things that to the untrained eye may look very similar. The first is therapeutic exercise, this is what most people would right away say is exercise. It is the activities intended on strengthening and lengthening your muscles (happy, healthy muscles are both strong and flexible), but these are exercises that are focused on general strength and flexibility.
The other action that Physical Therapists may do is Therapeutic Activity. Therapeutic Activity is focused and targeted on getting you back to doing the task that is impacted. For someone at risk of falling this might be standing and up and sitting down because of the high risk of falling, for someone with a work injury to the hand it might be properly tightening with a wrench, and for someone who cannot do daily activities like laundry that might be learning to properly pick up a laundry basket or bending over the laundry machine without risk of injury to the back.
Physical therapy isn’t just exercise for exercise sake. It is a focused and targeted prescription of rehabilitation that aims to get you back to optimal functioning.
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| When it comes to exercise, running on the treadmill or lift weights are not going to have a direct impact on your activities of daily living. But Therapeutic Activities done with your physical therapist can help make sure you can cook, clean, and dress yourself. Not all exercise is the same. |
- Manual Therapy
Physical Therapy isn’t just exercise because of the additional non-exercise interventions and treatments that a physical therapist can provide. One of those treatments is Manual Therapy, which can be described as hand movements, with or without instrument-assistance, to mobilize joints and soft tissue (i.e., muscles and ligaments) leading to improved tissue motion and reduced pain.
Manual Therapy can be used for a variety of conditions, but it is commonly used to treat swelling and edema, reduce pain and contraction (known as trigger-point release), and passive joint movement particularly post surgically.
- Modalities
Several other Physical Therapy interventions can be lumped together under the umbrella term “Modalities.” These are thermal, electrical, sound, light, and mechanical agents that a physical therapist can use to improve functional outcomes for their patients.
While each modality generally has its place in physical therapy practice, modalities are used to treat a variety of conditions often focused around improved joint and soft tissue movement, improved blood flow, and preparing the tissue for potentially more invasive procedures (e.g., heat or ice may relax a patient sufficiently for the physical therapist to engage in traction or manual therapy procedures).
- Expertise
When most people think about time they think in terms of whether it would be time well spent, or whether an activity will save them time. Playing soccer with your kids on a nice fall afternoon would be what most people would consider time well spent. Calling a plumber when you have leaky pipes might be time saved because they are experts in what they do. But there is a third area that should be considered “Time Well Invested.”
We do not generally think about being able to get more time, but when you lean on the expertise of a physical therapist who helps optimize your functioning you may both increase the amount of time you live and the quality of the time you have. You might be able to fumble through some exercises, but even if you stumble upon some that work, you still have to do them. A physical therapist is going to get you the exercises you need, now; along with all of the other interventions a PT can provide you.
The expertise of a Physical Therapist to get you exercises, when you need them, and to make sure that you are getting the most from them means that you recover faster and return to optimal functioning.
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| Physical Therapy is "Time Well Invested." When most things either save time, or are time well spent, Physical Therapy allows you to get more time back and to ensure that time is quality, we call this time well invested. |
- People Don’t Exercise at Home Anyway
Even if you are not convinced that physical therapy isn’t just exercise, the odds are without your physical therapist’s support you aren’t going to exercise on your own. In fact, of those people going through physical therapy who could get better, faster by following their home exercise program, only about 30% of people will.
Yes, Therapeutic Exercise may be a component of your physical therapy, it is not the only intervention your physical therapist is going to use. If you are unsure about how physical therapy might help you love your life, it is worth your time to speak with an expert.
