During our 20 years practicing as physical therapists, we’ve noticed a trend with our patients. Often, there’s a gap in between when PT has completed – meaning the injury has been healed – and getting back to the level of physical activity/training they were at prior to injury.
This trend has inspired us to start to create a program for our patients who are having trouble getting back into their regular workout regiment: The Bridge Program.
What is the Bridge Program?
Typically, our patients come to us with some sort of pain, whether it’s from an injury or its chronic. Whatever the source, there’s something that’s causing discomfort and preventing you from doing your regular physical activities.
Many of our patients get better in terms of their injury, but they have difficulty getting back to their peak performance in terms of their training or physical fitness routine. While sometimes there are in-depth issues causing this, for most people there’s no reason they shouldn’t be able to start training again as they were before.
However, we often see patients who can’t quite bridge the gap between PT and training. They might have to limit sessions with their trainer, change the way they’re training or feel like they can’t train at all. They often avoiding trying new classes, such as Cross Fit or Orange Theory, because they can’t participate or have to significantly modify.
What’s Causing the Disconnect?
The cause of the gap is different to each patients individual situation. However, some examples might be:
- —A head and neck injury is actually affected by running style. In order to get the patients back to training, we’d help they adjust their running form.
- —Low back pain might actually be affected by tension in other parts of the body. We’d do a whole body assessment to help determine the areas that need to be released.
Interested in incorporating the Bridge Program into your healing program?
We create these individualized programs to help you get back to your normal and past the frustration.
If you’re interested in learning more, you can contact us to request more information. If you’re a current patient, ask your therapist for more information.
