What Is Physical Therapy?

Common misconceptions of physical therapy are: “It hurts” or “It’s just exercises”. Watch the video below to hear about real physical therapy patients describe what physical therapy is:

The goal of physical therapy is to help restore normal function after injury or surgery, and to provide strategies for injury prevention. Your physical therapist therapist will conduct a thorough examination and develop a plan specific to the needs of the client, that may include manual therapy or movement-based techniques. Although physical therapist are experts in treating patients after they sustained an injury or had surgery, physical therapists can help reduce injury risks and are a great partner in helping you achieve lifetime wellness. The goal of our physical therapists is to not tell you to stop doing the activities you love, but help you fine-tune your functional problem areas so that you may return to pain-free activity as safely and effectively as possible.

Who Are Physical Therapists?

Many people become physical therapists because they experienced injury firsthand or had someone close to them did. After a rigorous three-year graduate program with a curriculum heavily focused on the sciences, physical therapists must pass the National Physical Therapy Exam and a licensing exam for their state of practice. Some therapists continue in residency and fellowship programs or become board-certified in a specialty such as Orthopedics, Neurology, or Pediatrics. Physical therapists are the healthcare practitioners with the most specialized education to help people improve motion and restore function.

"As physical therapists, we need to know every single muscle, bone, ligament, tendon and nerve in the body and how they relate directly and indirectly. Then we have to be able to fix them all through manual treatment and exercise prescription. A patient once asked me “how many exercises do you know?” My response was “endless”. That’s because every single exercise has thousands of modifications depending on how the patient presents."

– Therapydia physical therapist

Some of the qualities our physical therapists believe are important personality traits are “adaptability”, “personable, and “good communicator”

Physical therapists are lifelong learners. As part of requirements for licensure, they must earn continuing education credits by taking additional physical therapy coursework annually, throughout their career.

Why Therapydia?

At Therapydia, you’ll never here us tell you to stop doing the activities you love doing. We’re here to help you find ways to fine-tune your movement patterns so you can continue to do the things you love. By working one-on-one with each of our patients, we are able to treat the whole person vs. just the condition or injury they are coming in for.