Train, Recover, and Perform with a Plan Built for Your Sport
Sports therapy should do more than help an injured area feel better. It should prepare your body for the running, jumping, cutting, throwing, lifting, or repeated effort your sport requires.
At Meier & Marsh Physical Therapy, our physical therapists use sports therapy in West Valley City, Tooele in Northpointe, Tooele on Main Street and Grantsville, UT to identify what is limiting your performance and determine what needs to improve. Whether you want to return to competition, recreational sports, running, or the gym, treatment is built around the physical demands you need to handle.
What Is Sports Therapy?
Sports therapy is physical therapy focused on the movement and performance demands of athletic activity. It can be used during injury recovery, after surgery, while returning to sport, or when pain and physical limitations are interfering with training.
The treatment itself depends on the athlete. A runner may need to rebuild tolerance for repeated impact, while a basketball player may need greater jumping and landing capacity. A baseball or tennis athlete may need treatment focused on the strength, mobility, and control required for repeated overhead movement.
Sports Therapy Starts with Understanding Your Athletic Demands
An athlete can have normal motion during a basic examination and still struggle when speed, resistance, fatigue, or repetition increases. That is why our physical therapists look beyond the painful area and examine what happens during movements that relate to your sport.
Depending on your injury and athletic goals, your sports therapy assessment may include:
- Strength and power
- Joint mobility
- Balance and movement control
- Running mechanics
- Jumping and landing
- Acceleration and deceleration
- Cutting and changing direction
- Throwing or other overhead movements
- Tolerance for repeated effort
- Sport-specific movement
- Special tests for the injured area when appropriate
Your physical therapist compares these findings with what your sport requires. This helps determine whether limited strength, power, mobility, control, or workload tolerance needs to be addressed before you progress.
Treatment Is Prescribed from What We Find
Sports therapy is not a standard set of exercises given to every athlete. Your treatment is selected according to your examination, the demands of your sport, and how your body responds as rehabilitation becomes more challenging.
A treatment choice should have a reason behind it. If your examination shows that you cannot control a landing well under greater demand, for example, your program may build strength first and then progress to increasingly challenging jumping and landing tasks.
Your plan may include:
- Mobility work when restricted movement affects athletic tasks
- Progressive strengthening to rebuild the force needed for your sport
- Progressive loading for muscles and tendons that need greater capacity
- Manual therapy when examination findings indicate it may be useful
- Running drills to prepare for increasing speed, distance, or repeated effort
- Jumping and landing exercises for athletes returning to impact
- Agility training for sports requiring rapid changes of direction
- Throwing or overhead progression for athletes who repeatedly use the arm
- Sport-specific exercises that recreate important parts of practice and competition
Building from Rehabilitation Back to Sport
Feeling better during everyday activities is an important step, but sport usually asks much more of your body. You may need to sprint repeatedly, absorb a landing, cut at speed, throw many times, or maintain your technique as fatigue increases.
Sports therapy progressively closes that gap. Your physical therapist can increase resistance, speed, repetition, direction changes, and task complexity as your abilities improve, then evaluate how you respond before advancing again.
Sports Therapy Can Work with Other Physical Therapy Treatments
Sports therapy is often one part of a larger rehabilitation plan rather than a separate treatment used by itself. An athlete with restricted ankle movement, for example, may initially need mobility work before progressing into loaded calf exercises, running, jumping, and cutting.
Another athlete may begin with treatment for shoulder pain before advancing into strength, power, and a gradual throwing progression. Our physical therapists select and combine treatments according to what the examination shows and what you need to do in your sport.
Clinical Expertise That Goes Beyond Basic Recovery
At Meier & Marsh Physical Therapy, getting an athlete out of pain is not the finish line. Our physical therapists use clinical expertise to determine which athletic qualities still need work and whether your current abilities match the demands you are preparing to face.
We also make sure you understand why your program is progressing in a certain way. Knowing what you are rebuilding and how it relates to your sport helps turn rehabilitation into a clear plan for getting back to doing what you love.
Frequently Asked Questions
Get Back to Your Sport with Meier & Marsh Physical Therapy
Your rehabilitation should reflect the athlete you are and the sport you want to return to. Sports therapy gives us the opportunity to move beyond basic recovery and prepare your body for the speed, strength, power, control, and repetition your activity demands.
Contact Meier & Marsh Physical Therapy today to learn more about sports therapy in West Valley City, Tooele in Northpointe, Tooele on Main Street or Grantsville, UT. Our physical therapists can assess what is limiting your performance and prescribe a treatment plan that progresses toward the movements you need for training and competition.
Your Next Steps…
- Request An Appointment
- Receive A Custom Treatment Plan
- Work Hard and Progress In Your Recovery
- Recover & Enjoy Life Pain-Free
