Have you ever hurt your foot and had to limp around for a while? It’s an age-old strategy.
You spare the pain by making the rest of your body work around it. And it helps for a bit, but limp for too long and you’ll realize this compensation isn’t a solution. Your foot gets relief, but then your knee may become sore or your back starts to ache because they weren’t built to move like this.
Ouch! And these new pains won’t get better until you fix the limp that created them in the first place.
Seems obvious, right?
But what if you had a compensation less noticeable than a limp, one you didn’t even realize was happening? This is more common than you think and even happens at the highest levels of performance: a Major League Baseball player once injured his shoulder, not realizing that his big toe injury had subtly compromised his throwing form! Had he only treated his shoulder, he might not have corrected the cause of the injury in the first place: the failure of his entire body to move properly with all the parts working well together.
That’s where PRO Medical Physical Therapy can help. We can find the cause of your pain, even when it may be far from where you feel it. Our PRO Medical Physical Therapists are biomechanical experts. Like mechanics for your body, they’ll create a personalized treatment plan to help you move all the parts properly so you can move painlessly.
We’re now excited to introduce a proven, nationally-recognized system to find and treat movement problems and compensations: Selective Functional Movement Assessment (SFMA).
SFMA takes a comprehensive approach to finding errors in your movement so you can address what’s hurting now before it becomes bigger trouble later. SFMA starts with testing ten key motions that you do all the time, such as reaching, squatting, or looking over your shoulder. If there’s pain or difficulty with the movement, your PRO Medical Physical Therapist will dig deeper, breaking down the test motion into parts until the problem is identified.
Once the problem is discovered, we’ll create a treatment plan to fix it. If a joint is blocked, your PRO Medical Physical Therapist will work on restoring your mobility. If you aren’t controlling your motion well, we’ll help you learn how to move in a smoother, more stable manner. Soon, when all of your parts are moving well together, not only will your pain br gone, but you will have also added insurance against any new pain starting up.
Written by PRO Medical
