Authors estimate over 100,000 ACL reconstructions are performed in our country each year. With equal incidence of early arthritis in both conservatively treated and surgically repaired ACLs the main reason for these surgeries would be to improve an athlete’s ability to return to their prior levels of sport. In prior decades, professional athletes who benefited...
Strength training creates a positive stress on the nervous and musculoskeletal systems leading to well established gains in mental, emotional, and physical health. This stress must be continually progressed in a gradual fashion to ensure these gains do not plateau. It is no surprise many novice exercisers, and some patients in Physical Therapy, quit their...
Direct access to Physical Therapy services was first written into a state’s law (Nebraska) in the 1950s and since has been shown in the literature to be safe, effective, and less costly than seeing a physician first for musculoskeletal pain. Due in part to its’ cost effectiveness large organizations including fortune 500 companies and the...
Exercise selection is one of the most important variables in a weekly strength training program. In general, individuals should look for multi joint (ex. lat pulldown) exercises instead of single joint exercises (barbell curl). At our Boulder Physical Therapy practice we recommend participants select one exercise from each of the following categories: vertical push, vertical...
Strength and muscle hypertrophy (growth) are two separate benefits of strength training. In some participants these occur together, but in other participants (age, sex, training status, nutrition) strength gains often occur without significant increases in muscle size. This is an important point for individuals who refrain from weight training due to fear of “bulking up”...
Tendinopathies, the artist formally known as tendinitis, are common orthopedic and sports medicine conditions affecting both athletes and the general population. Repetitive overload (overuse) of these structures creates a reactive followed by degenerative process in the affected tendon. These injured tissues have not been shown to have significant numbers of inflammatory cells but rather show...
Isometrics, muscle contractions without movement of a joint, have been utilized for many decades as a form of strength training and performance, but have recently been highlighted as an effective treatment for tendon pain. In our Boulder Physical Therapy practice, isometrics are helpful to initially load a tissue after surgery or injury, as well as,...
One of the reasons our species reached the top of the food chain involves our ability to thrive under a variety of environments and circumstances. Our ability to conserve energy and resources during times of scarcity has ensured our survival, but in times of abundance these physiological mechanisms likely hold us back from our fitness...
Physical Therapists aim to utilize clinical objective tests to confirm their evolving hypotheses on the source of patient’s current symptoms. One of the most beneficial areas of our Physical Therapy and orthopedic research has involved the confirmation or refute of known clinical tests to identify patients with or without a given diagnosis such as an...
If you only had time for one strength training exercise it would be hard to beat the squat due to its’ high recruitment of lower quarter muscles including the legs and core. Numerous variations of the squat including sit to stand, goblet squat, front squat, back squat, split squat, and zercher squats exist allowing individuals...