Manual Physical Therapy Services
Manual therapy is one of the simplest and most effective methods for treating a variety of common health issues. This hands-on approach to physical therapy focuses on restoring natural movement in the body while ensuring that the muscles and joints remain unharmed.
Manualized therapy can help reduce pain and improve mobility, allowing individuals to engage in daily activities with greater ease and comfort. By addressing restrictions in movement and promoting relaxation, manual physical therapy can enhance overall physical function and well-being. With its personalized treatment plans, it can also serve as a complementary option alongside other therapeutic approaches, making it a valuable tool in comprehensive healthcare.
What is Manual Therapy?
Manual therapy focuses on relaxing tight, painful muscle tissues and resolving the sources of your pain through therapeutic techniques. By improving overall muscle function and encouraging relaxation, our manual therapy techniques can drastically reduce pain and inflammation in targeted areas of the body. This approach to physical therapy is delivered exclusively with the hands, unlike other types of therapy that require machines or external devices. Manual therapy is a safe, highly effective treatment that can successfully treat a variety of painful conditions, including:
- Chronic back pain and spasms
- Muscle tension in the neck and shoulders
- Problems with joint mobility and stiffness
- Headaches and migraines
At Total Motion Physical Therapy, we provide soft tissue massage and manual manipulation to help relieve tight muscles and increase circulation in the areas surrounding them. By encouraging healthy blood flow and relieving inflammation, we can help ease even the toughest areas of pain.
What to Expect With Manualized Therapy Treatments
Before your session begins, we will assess your current health and evaluate the condition of your bones and muscles to ensure you are in good enough shape to undergo treatment.
The most common techniques used in manual therapy include the following:
- STM Treatment: During your session, one of our physical therapists will typically start out with soft tissue mobilization, also known as STM. STM helps break up those tough areas of muscle tension where scar tissue and other tissues have built up and caused restricted movement or pain. Using specialized massage therapy techniques that include applying deep pressure and a gentle stretching technique, we can help reduce pain and restore proper range of motion.
- Joint Mobilization: This is typically the next step in a manual therapy session, and it’s important for reducing pain in the long term. With joint mobilization, our physical therapists perform gentle movements that increase your range of motion slowly without causing any harm to the joints. These techniques are often followed by Muscle Energy Techniques (MET), which help lengthen muscles that have been shortened over time and those that don’t move as well. Over time, these combined actions result in increased motion, less pain and improvement of overall symptoms.
- Strain/Counterstrain: This is a helpful technique that aids in correcting issues commonly associated with bad posture and other sources of back pain. Through mild stretching that includes intervals of rest, we can help relieve acute back problems and other types of pain safely and comfortably.
In order to get the most benefit from manual therapy, your physical therapist may recommend additional exercises and stretches that should be performed while you are in treatment and for a period of time after treatment has ended. By helping relieve your pain now and showing you how to maintain your new pain-free lifestyle through healthy exercise, manual therapy can be a highly effective treatment for many patients.
Let Total Motion Physical Therapy help relieve back pain, reduce inflammation, and correct chronic muscle and joint issues.
Find Relief at Total Motion
Questions about manual therapy in physical therapy?
Contact us today to schedule a consultation or visit one of our clinics for manual therapy in Blacksburg, Christiansburg, or Radford, VA.