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Discover The Different Forms Of Therapeutic Exercise And How They Encourage Healing

By Coleen Torres


When a person sustains an injury from playing sports, an accident or any other reason, he or she may need to undergo physical therapy to restore normal movement to the body. Part of this approach involves the use of therapeutic exercise to help the patient regain balance, strength, flexibility, and range of motion and alleviate pain.

The patient's movement abilities will be assessed and his or her medical history will be taken by the physical therapist. Based on this information, a personalized training plan of specific exercises will be devised to present the patient with increasing physical challenges that will promote healing. The first step is to overcome pain, and then continuing on to regain bodily endurance, flexibility, and strength.

Physical therapy exercises are classified according to the nature of the movement involved and the impact it has on the muscles and joints. Passive exercises help restore normal movement in joints and require little to no work from the muscles as the force is applied to them, either manually or from a continuous passive motion unit or similar mechanical device. In contrast, active exercise calls for muscular involvement, with or without assistance, in a manner which improves joint movement and neuromuscular control.

Other activities are prescribed to help patients regain strength and endurance in the muscles which have been injured. This is normally added to the program once the patient can safely perform basic flexibility and range-of-motion movements without help. Progressive resistance is added to the routine at a steady rate to gradually build back lost strength in the muscles, tendons, ligaments, and bones, which is the body's natural response.

Strength training moves are categorized as either dynamic or static. The latter are movements that don't require articulation of the joints, which means the length of muscle fibers is not affected and muscular tension and resistance are in a state of equilibrium. The angle of static moves is what contributes to strength development, performing them using multiple angles and holding each move for several seconds is most effective.

Dynamic exercises differs in that it does involve movement of the joints and muscles, in particular concentric and eccentric movement, which refers to a repeated shortening and lengthening of the muscle fibers that produces force and develops strength. This type of exercise can be grouped into isotonic, isokinetic, variable-resistance, and manual movements.

Isotonic movements are those which lengthen the muscle by means of an externally applied force that imposes a change on the angle of the joint. Examples include the use of free weights, ankle weights, and weight machines. Variable-resistance exercises involve limited force production by the muscles when the joints are in extreme positions of range-of-motion. There are machines to apply resistance relative to force with proper joint alignment. Manual resistance is similar except that it is performed with the therapist's assistance rather than a machine.

With isokinetic exercises, the resistance and muscle force are equal, and they are performed with a fixed speed. Specially designed fitness machines provide a level of force commensurate with the user's muscle resistance, and the balance of concentric/eccentric action and velocity can normally be adjusted as well.




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