An opportunity to speak in-person about YOUR specific issue and/or concerns and determine if we are the right place for you.
Direct Physical Therapy Boise uses a personal approach to care and we devote an hour of one-on-one care to each client. Treatment is customized to the individual and often includes manual (hands on) treatment, corrective exercises, and education.
We believe in treating the cause of your symptoms not just the pain you are feeling. Using a systematic approach we will evaluate your movement patterns, joint mobility, tissue quality and strength using a variety of methods. Your treatment and care is then customized to optimize your performance and improve function to get you back to work, back to play and back to living.
Mechanical Diagnosis and Treatment (MDT) is a safe, structured and evidence-based system used to assess and treat patients. The system can be applied to the spine and/or extremities. As MDT therapists, our greatest skill lies in our assessment, where we use the information collected from the symptomatic and mechanical presentation of a patient to classify them into a particular group. From there, we can then match our treatment approach with the particular classification. Patients receive a program designed specifically for them, emphasizing active involvement, education, self-management and prevention of recurrence. With continual assessment and re-assessment of the patient (often <6 sessions), results are achieved fast, decreasing the financial burden to patients. This method is designed to teach patients not only how to heal themselves, but how to prevent the same injury from reoccurring in the future.
Trigger points, or “knots,” are often found in muscles, and can be tight and often painful. Although common, trigger points are are not “normal,” and need to be addressed in order for a muscle to work properly.
Some trigger points hurt all the time, others hurt only when pressure is applied, and others cause pain far away from their actual location. This is why neck pain can sometimes be relieved by addressing trigger points in the shoulder muscles, and vice versa.
There are a variety of treatments available for trigger points, and your therapist will know which technique is best for you. As with other therapies, resolving a trigger point will typically uncover a baseline injury or muscle weakness that can be treated using additional treatment techniques.
Pain is complex, and understanding its root causes can be daunting. While a normal part of daily life, pain can become abnormal very quickly—with devastating results. Pain education attempts to “explain pain,” which is a critical step on the journey to recovery (particularly from chronic pain).
Research indicates that when a person understands more about their pain, particularly the biology behind it, they are able to move better, exercise longer, experience less pain, and have hope in returning to a “normal” life.
Pain is very personal—and experiencing prolonged periods of pain can become intensely so. We hope we can be a part of a team that returns you to pain-free living.
Our bodies are able to move because of signals transmitted from our brains. When we want to take a sip of coffee, the brain triggers a series of events that moves our hand to a cup, the cup to our mouths, and allows us to swallow. When injuries and pain occur, that fluid flow of information from the brain to the body can get interrupted. When that happens, normal patterns of movement change and our bodies are more susceptible to injury…like when a car is out of alignment.
Neuro re-education techniques attempt to bring the brain and body back into balance. This treatment modality exercises a re-training process so we can move in the most efficient and effective way possible…in other words we can Move Better. This can include balance training, core activation, and teaching muscles to fire at the right time, in the right order, and at the right speed.
Myofascial release is a manual therapy and massage technique that gently and slowly decreases tension in muscles, and helps to improve a muscle’s ability to move by treatingmyofascial connective tissue restrictions. This is an excellent pain-relieving technique that is very gentle, and can be tolerated by almost all clients.
Fascia are densely woven coverings for muscles, bones, nerves, arteries and veins, as well as all of the internal organs including the heart, lungs, brain and spinal cord. The fascial system is not a system of separate coverings, but is instead a continuous structure that runs from head to toe in the human anatomy. (This is one of the reasons why injury to one part of the body can result in pain in a completely different part of the body!)
By releasing restrictions in the fascia, muscles are able to move without limitations and oftentimes with less pain. If fascial injuries are chronic, it’s often necessary to retrain muscles on optimal movement patterns, after restoring their ability to move freely again.