About The Recovery Zone
Recovery is defined as a return to a normal
state of health, mind or strength. There are two categories of recovery; immediate or short-term recovery and long-term recovery. Both are essential components of managing repetitive physical stress from training, preventing injuries, improving performance and enhancing overall health.
Short-term recovery (active recovery)
occurs immediately after exercise in the cool-down phase and may continue during the following days. Long-term recovery is built into a training program and includes days off, modifying workouts and adding other modalities of training.
Proper recovery is essential for training and competing at your highest potential, while decreasing your risk for injury, muscle soreness, and fatigue. Sterlington Physical Therapy’s Recovery Zone will give you the tools to recover efficiently and faster by incorporating a variety of tools to actively recover the body, and help aid in the recovery process.
The goal of The RECOVERY ZONE at Sterlington Physical Therapy is to enhance your fitness experience or daily routine by providing you with the tools and resources you need to recover and be ready for your next workout or work day.
We’ve incorporated new technologies in recovery that will help you gain the most benefit from your workout, improve performance and relieve stress and tension from your everyday life, whether it be from standing 8-10hrs at work or competing in a marathon, we’ve got you covered with our active recovery tools. See instant improvements in muscle recovery and performance.
Our focus is to provide the active individual with the tools to reduce muscle fatigue and injury. Proper dedication to recovery will ensure a healthy body to endure the physical activities and requirements of specific sports and daily routines. Schedule your appointment today. Physical Therapists are also on staff to assess if there are any underlying medical conditions.
Active Recovery Tools Include:
3 STEP APPROACH:
Deep Muscle Stimulator Theragun:
•hand-held device that delivers strong vibration, oscillation, and percussion to the muscles.This reduces stiffness by signaling inhibition of the sympathetic nervous system and can also decrease trigger points, tight muscles and muscle soreness.
•Helps to relieve muscle soreness and stiffness,
Improves range of motion, Promotes circulation, and Accelerates warmup and recovery.
Vasopneumatic Compression:
•The pressurized compartments in the boots compress your legs, which assists with mobilizing fluids and speeds up your body’s natural process of filtering lactic acid, metabolites, and other debris that build up after exercise. This is a proven method of improving blood circulation and driving higher volumes of healthy, filtered, and oxygen-rich blood to your muscles as they rebuild, significantly reducing the time it takes you to recover.
Electrical Stimulation:
•Used alongside heat or ice for pain and inflammation management as well as to accelerate muscle recovery.
Benefits: The process of contracting the muscles dilates blood vessels to increase blood flow, and to deliver more oxygenated nutrients to the specific area being treated. The lymphatic system is also engaged and benefits from this muscle activity. By pushing deoxygenated blood away from the fatigued area, the recovery of the muscle is greatly accelerated.
Other services offered:
Kinesiotaping:
•The Kinesio Taping® Method is a technique designed to promote healing while providing support and stability. Latex-free and wearable for days at a time even through showers, swimming and sports, Kinesio® Tex Tape is safe for populations ranging from pediatric to geriatric, and successfully treats a variety of orthopedic, neuromuscular, neurological and other medical conditions.
Dry Needling:
•Integrative Dry Needling is a highly effective form of PT treatment for a multitude of musculoskeletal and neuromuscular conditions. It is NOT acupuncture; it is based on neuroanatomy and modern science. A very fine, sterile monofilament is inserted through the skin into deeper tissues that are trigger points to your pain. The micro-lesion created breaks up shortened tissues, normalizes the inflammatory response, and mediates your pain. The environment created enhances your body’s ability to heal, thus reducing pain.
Stretching:
•Experience deeper levels of pain-free stretching with an assisted, one-on-one stretching session. Our therapists will facilitate and guide you through a series of stretches based on your specific flexibility needs and goals.
Cupping:
•Cupping is a manual therapy technique performed by physical therapists for treatment of skin, soft tissue, and muscles. Cupping increases blood flow and mobilizes tissue to increase range of motion, decrease pain and promote healing.
Flossing:
•Significantly Reduce Muscle Soreness: Muscle Floss helps break up intramuscular "junk" to allow for greater mobility and blood supply to an area. By squeezing the muscle in a tight wrap, then forcing it through a full range-of-motion, friction between muscle fibers help to break up fuzz, scar tissue, lactic acid, and other “junk” in those tiny places that foam rolling and lacrosse ball techniques can't address.
•Healing and Cleansing Power: When you release the band, a rush of blood washes through the muscle; this not only brings nutrients for growth and healing, but also clears out all that junk you just broke up. This is also true for injury recovery and can be used to aid the healing of strained tissue. For swollen areas, you want to promote lymphatic drainage.
•Stretch Those Hard to Stretch Places: To work shoulders, wrists, ankles, elbows and the little pieces within, wrap a floss band tightly around the joint. (occasionally it may require two bands to cover the area) Once wrapped, put it through a full range-of-motion like push-ups, PVC pass-throughs, squatting, lunging, etc. For knees, wrap one band above and one below the joint, then perform squats. This stretches the small muscles and ligaments, which can greatly decrease joint pain and stiffness.