Physical Therapy Denver, CO

Unless your an active skier or snowboarder, spring denotes a time where it’s time to dust off creaky joints and get ready for a new spring season of physical activity, whether you’re in a local adult soccer league or just eager to explore the wide variety of hiking trails you’ve researched this winter. While you may be eager to hit the trail or pitch as soon as the weather warms, it’s important to be cognizant of the physical preparations that are often necessary to prepare for physical activities, particularly as we being to age. 

At Cherry Creek Wellness Center, we offer patients from across Denver a wide variety of treatments to help them stay active, maintain mobility and flexibility, and recover from injury. Keeping in touch with your body means more than daily exercise, it’s also about responding to what your muscle and skeletal systems might need after intense competition. What you may not know is that our sports physical therapy treatment options can help tennis players from Cherry Creek, long-distance runners from Stapleton, golfers from Wheat Ridge, and hikers from Denver West prepare for the fast-approaching spring and summer activity seasons. After all, the best way to recover from a sports-related injury is to try your best to prevent it from happening in the first place. 

The sports physical therapy here at Cherry Creek Wellness are expertly trained in providing athletes across the entire spectrum of competition with treatments that focus on the prevention, evaluation, and rehabilitation of sports-related injuries. Whether you’re a veteran athlete, or a student-athlete eager to embark on a long career of sports and athletic participation, our team of friendly, personable and well-trained sports physical therapy experts can help you reduce recurring injuries as well as offer tips and treatments that can enhance your performance. 

Know Your Body: A Sports Physical Therapy Evaluation

At the start of a sports physical therapy evaluation, an athlete would undergo functional testing. Functional testing refers to a series of tests and measures that require an athlete to mimic the skills and movements necessary for their specific sport, be it strength, a specific range of motion, or flexibility. Since every sport requires a different conglomeration of movements, our team will work closely with you to establish an evaluation that includes the entire range of activities you participate in.  Administering functional testing helps tour team determine any specific weaknesses as well as areas of improvement. This information is then incorporated into the athlete’s plan of care —a broad scope of strength and conditioning exercises designed to round you into peak form.

Specialized Treatment: Finding a Path for You

After an initial evaluation of you, any pertinent injury history and discussion of sports-related pains you’ve been experiencing, our team sports physical therapy professionals will opt from a wide variety of preset protocols that have been tailored to your specific sport. These physical therapy regimens are concentrated on developing each of the particular physical skills required for your sport —or sports —of choice. Since many sports involve running, our team may consider a gait analysis or menu of leg strengthening exercises. Implementing these sports-specific exercises assists both our team of therapists, you, the athlete, and your primary health care provider all know when the athlete is ready to handle the numerous physical demands of your sport of choice. 

It’s also important to remember that such protocols can also be position-specific to the sport you choose, because sometimes different positions on a team require different skill sets. You may enjoy soccer, but may be better suited to a position more reliant on bursts of speed than endurance (defender vs. forward.) Similarly, you may enjoy playing baseball, but past arm strain or injury may dictate that you play a position where your shoulders and elbows aren’t utilized as much (first baseman vs. shortstop.)

Prevention: Staying Health and On the Field, All Season Long

As many athletes know, one of the main tenets of sports physical therapy is focused on injury prevention. While athletes are always seen by medical professionals post-injury, sports physical therapy programs like the kinds offered here at Cherry Creek Wellness also address prevention of injury, notably prevention of injuries that you as an athlete have suffered in the past. Since many sports-related injuries are a result of faulty biomechanics or weaknesses in particular muscle groups, our team of expert sports physical therapists right here in Denver can initiate a personalized, comprehensive program of exercises that will improve the strength of key muscle groups while promoting endurance, in addition to demarcating any biomechanical insufficiencies. At Cherry Creek Wellness, our sports physical therapists don’t only help you get back out on the field after an injury, they help you take the field with newfound confidence and poise —no matter what your sport, physical history or age group. Contact us today to schedule an appointment and to start to implement an treatment regimen that will make this spring and summer your best season yet.