Does this sound like you?
You have gone through your prescribed physical therapy but you are still unsure of how you will be confident when you get back in the game.
Though your surgeon has done table tests and said you’re good to go, you know something is missing.
You feel like you haven’t been tested and/or exposed to things that stress your body similar to your sport, so you don’t know if you are ready to go again.
You have done all of the exercises and stretches but don’t really know what to do next to get over the hump and back to competing again.
It feels like you are spinning your wheels and haven’t figured out EXACTLY what you need to work on to get the most out of your body. This is where our Return to Sport Testing comes in.
What traditional Return to Sport is Missing
- — Objective measures to track the progress of the physical qualities needed for your sport (not just range of motion, table tests and bodyweight exercises).
- — Physical therapists or clinicians with strength and conditioning backgrounds that understand the demands of your sport.
- — A comprehensive and collaborative plan that is designed to get you stronger and more confident than pre-injury.
- — The level of challenge your body needs that matches or exceeds your sport to vaccinate your body from re-injury as best as possible.
- — Enough objective data relative to your sport to have a clear understanding of what needs to be worked on to get back to your sport CONFIDENTLY without the guesswork.
Dynamometer
This tells us how much force one can produce and how quickly one can produce it. This is important for a few reasons:
- 1. Getting a baseline of strength prior to surgery
- 2. Objectively measuring amount and speed of force
- 3. Test strength of individual muscle groups
The earlier you test the strength of the non-injured leg the better. This baseline testing should be done before any weakness happens due to lessened or complete inactivity. This then serves as the target for the surgically repaired knee. This is what the pros do, so why not you? This is something we offer free of charge for an athlete waiting for surgery. We are extremely passionate about raising the standards to decrease risks of reinjury so contact us if you or someone you know is interested.
Force is the name of the game when it comes to sports. Essentially all team sports are about attacking or evading space as well as in some cases throwing/catching an object. What do all of these have in common? The more force one can create the faster the athlete can achieve these tasks.
The second reason is we can test individual muscle groups which can detect weaknesses that go unseen in traditional return to play testing like hop tests. Athletes are incredible compensators so being able to test the strength of individual muscles (as well as global tests) is crucial for return to play criteria.
Force Plate
The force plates are an incredible tool that have now become more available for facilities like us. This technology gives us the ability to have a professional level sports medicine lab’s worth of data guide us to make smart training decisions from how intense sessions should be to exactly how we want to load the body to get the most out of training. Here are the main reasons we use the force plates.
- 1. Readiness and fatigue monitoring
- 2. Comparing one leg to another
- 3. How high and fast an athlete can get off the ground
- 4. Monitor landing mechanics and how an athlete absorbs forces
One of the most important aspects of training or rehab is knowing when to go hard and when to take it easy. A quick look at how an athlete is jumping along with a conversation guides the coach or practitioner on how strenuous a session should be (this is true individualization and vital to speed the rehab process).
Being able to objectively compare the non-surgical and surgical legs (or arm) is another key component to the rehab process to decrease risk of reinjury (especially in the later stages of rehab). The force plates not only look at how high an athlete can jump, but it can gather the data that tells us how that athlete pushes off the ground and how they absorb the forces when landing.
This detailed data curtails the athlete’s individualized program and is why every one of our practitioners has extensive knowledge in both rehab and strength and conditioning.
Strength and Conditioning
Developing the general physical qualities like strength, mobility, speed, power, work capacity (repeatability) is what gives an athlete the best chance to have a long and healthy career whether coming back from injury or completely healthy.
We are extremely passionate about this and it is why you will not see run of the mill exercises that everyone gets, a sheet of random exercises or any other low level care. Because all of our practitioners are both knowledgeable and passionate about strength and conditioning, everyone we work with gets an individualized program to get them feeling the most resilient they have felt in their career.
It is our mission to give people the tools they need to not only get back in the game, but to become more resilient and confident than ever before. Let’s get you back on track and feel what it is like to rehab like the pros.
