Wouldn't it be great to have an industry expert on your side to help eliminate and reduce injuries, write a workout program based on said injuries, and be your coach for all other health-related questions you have?
Boston, you're in luck. This is what Physical Therapy at Ripple is.
Over the last few weeks, we've seen an influx of people reach out looking for a 'coach' or 'guide' or someone to help them navigate the current injuries they have, optimize their current workout plan, and help them overall train for life.
In today's world, there's so much information about what's hottest new exercise or best stretch to do for your hip it's really hard to determine what's the best way to eat, exercise and recover. Trying to educate yourself on all things wellness on top of trying to be an expert in your own work life can be exhausting.
This is why a lot people just give up or give into their everyday pain and health habits -- the overwhelming amount of information is too hard to sift through. This is why you need to invest in your health and wellness, and hire a Physical Therapist.
But isn't Physical Therapy just for injuries!?
If this were 5 years ago, I'd concede and say yes. But, here in Boston and all throughout the country Physical Therpaists are realizing they have so much more to offer their client base then just generic lower back stretches and theraband exercises.
Physical Therapists can help in basically every facet of your health and wellness routine to help you feel your best self, get out of pain, and optimize your life!
Here's what a Physical Therapist helps with;
Write a workout plan
The general premise of Physical Therapy and what a Phyiscal Therapist does is to identify lack of mobility or strength, and write out a plan of care to get that area causing the pain stronger and more mobile. This is no different than writing up an exercise plan.
We might be biased, but there is no one better to write up a safe and effective workout plan rather than a Physical Therapist. A PTs education goes through how the body works, how to identify imbalances, and what you need to do in order to move better and feel better. With all of this knowledge, a Physical Therapist can write a workout plan up based on your injury history, goals, and training style to help you not only workout how you want, but stay injury free while getting stronger!
Everyone that comes to Ripple for Physical Therapy ends up sticking around
Help manage stress levels
One of the most overlooked reasons people are dealing with chronic pain is due to their stresslevels. This is particularly the case here in Boston where most people are working high stress jobs. Having that external stress can manifest itself and cause injuries to occur at a higher rate. Most people don't know this, but dealing with external stress of work and life can negitivley affect how your body recovers from exercise or an injury. Not only that, but you can't give it your all during a workout or rehab plan of care if the stress from everyday life is too high.
Our PT at Ripple handles these stress levels. During the initial evaluation, we don't just look at your injury site but take the time to learn about you, who you are, and what type of stressors life is handing you. Based on that initial conversation, we can then decide what the best plan of care is.
Most high stress individuals see extremely good results simply implementing a breathing plan in to get them to go from their fight or flight nervous system to their rest and digest. Many neck, shoulder, or lower back problems will solve themselves just from getting yourself to chill out.
With all that being said, we're not naive and know that stress is just apart of life. But, what we do best is teach people how to understand when stress is starting to take shape into pain and give people the tools and exercise routines to manage them.
Help with recovery
Just because you're out of pain doesn't mean you stop pushing it! Honestly, it probably means that you're going harder in the gym, golfing more holes, or hiking more since you're feeling so good. But, since you're pushing it a little bit more, this means that you need to help your body recover.
One of PT's best strengths is what we call 'pre-hab' which means before rehabilitation or what we can do to help you not get hurt. The best thing you can do while you're out there pushing the limits is to have someone constantly evaluating and treating your body to catch any sort of limitations or weaknesses that may be coming. Along with the constant evaluation, a mix of manual therapy and dry needling will help keep your joints loose, muscles feeling good, and body in tip top shape so you can recover faster and get back out there sooner. Clients often come in weekly for this type of service. Don't you wish you knew that before you got injured in the first place?
Be a sounding board for those naggy aches and pains
You don't have to be in pain to go to Physical Therapy! I'll say it again YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE IN PAIN TO GO TO PHYSICAL THERAPY!!
Luckily, this notion is starting to change and people are starting to realize that Physical Therapy isn't what it used to be. More and more people are seeking out Physical Therapy so they can wake up in the morning feeling like their best self. No more tight hips, dealing with that low grade back pain, or knee pain when you ski.
Wouldn't it be nice to not live all day with those tweaks? We agree.
Steer you in the right direction with nutrition
While we're not Registered Dietians so giving nutrtiaonal advice is out of our scope of practice, we're more than capable of talking through what the best plan of action for your nutrition is.
To start -- are you drinking enough water? If you know you don't please stop reading this right now and go fill up your water bottle.
We also talk in-depth in about how certain foods may be causing inflammation and how to determine which foods may be doing that. A lot of people don't realize this, but putting the wrong food in your body can set you're rehab plan back and instead of your hip pain going away in 4 weeks, it may take 12 or even longer to heal.
For our performance patients looking to optimize workouts, runs, or whatever their sport is we chat about nutrition timing and how to fueld your body pre and post exercise to get the most out of your plan. Quick hint, EAT MORE!
And as always, we have a huge local network of MD's and RD's we refer our clients with bigger needs to!
Talk through sleep patterns
This might be the number 1 reason why you're still in pain or not seeing any results with your workouts. It's the hard truth. Are you getting 7-9 hours of sleep each night? Is it restful sleep where you're not getting woken up or have blue light screens in your eyes all night?
I know there are a lot of uncontrollable factors with sleep. For example, I have a 8 year old golden retriever who likes to snuggle a little too much and when he doesn't get his spot on the bed no one sleeps. But, even though Charlie might wake me up one or two times a night, I make sure I control the controllable factors.
During your Physical Therapy sessions, you talk through pre-bed time routine and how you can optimize it. We honestly make people buy old school alarm clocks so they can keep their phones in a different room to prevent doom scrolling right before bed. It sounds crazy, but little tactics like this work. When was the last time you honestly got a great night of sleep? Physical Therapy here at Ripple Boston will force you to do it more.
The obvious, get you out of pain so you can get your life back
This is our wheelhouse. You're in pain, and don't know where to go. You've tried PT before and even gone to a chriro and the massage guru down the street but nothing seems to work.
Our Physical Therapy is Boston's best. With 1 on 1, 60 minute sessions we take to the time to understand each one of the above buckets and figure out where we need to put our efforts into. Once we get everything into place, that injury you've been dealing with will be out of mind and you'll be back to the gym, playing your sport, or simply living life without pain.
We help people everyday immediately after their injury, post-op, or just wanting to optimize their overall lifestyle.
Because all of our Physical Therapists handle all of these buckets, PT doesn't stop at week 12. Our community ends up sticking around for the long haul, and the PT who got you out of pain and back to doing what you love is now curating workout plans for you, writing up mobility routines to have when you go on that golf trip, or being someone you can lean on for manual therapy or dry needling recovery on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.
On this 15-minute phone call you chat with Jeremy, founder of Ripple, about what's currently limiting you from hitting your goals, and how our alternative approach to Physical Therapy can help. Book your call today!
