PT-Helper's September Blog Posts for Physical Therapists

Concussions and Neck Exercises
Published On September 18, 2018
Neck strength is being recognized as a prevention and rehabilitation strategy for concussions. Strong neck muscles can help control the motion of the head and control the brain motion inside the skull during an impact. PT-Helper has collaborated with Iron Neck to put their neck strength and mobility training exercises in our neck exercise catalog providing therapists with additional resources to avoid and rehab concussions.

Create a New Exercise within the PT-Helper Mobile App

Published On September 13, 2018
Therapists may customize an exercise based upon their own experiences or the restrictions and capabilities of their patients. Creating a new exercise within the PT-Helper mobile app is a simple way to add customized exercises to your Favorites program ensuring that you have all of your exercises with you. Using the built-in camera feature adds pictures and videos to help you remember how to do the exercises correctly.


5 Reasons Why Your Back Pain Keeps Coming Back

Published On September 4, 2018

By guest writer Dennis Treubig PT, DPT, SCS, CSCS.
80% of the population will experience back pain at some point in their lives. Dr. Treubig identifies the 5 most common reasons from his 10+ years of treating athletes and active individuals that cause recurring back pain.

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Concussions and Neck Exercises

Awareness of long-term health risks of multiple concussions and recent changes to the guidelines on diagnosing and managing head injuries by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention raises new approaches to dealing and preventing concussions.

Iron Neck Exercises Now on PT-Helper App

Concussion research over the past five years has brought more attention to neck strength as a prevention and rehabilitation strategy. Strong neck muscles can help control the motion of the head and control the brain motion inside the skull.

The Iron Neck is a strength and mobility training device that allows isometric training of the neck, back and core across a full range of motion. It is a rehabilitation tool for treating neck and back injuries in everyone from elite athletes to desk warriors to active aging individuals.

"Working with the neck in a consistent, repeatable way is a challenge," says Iron Neck inventor Mike Jolly. "We solved that problem for athletes and large sports teams and over the past two years and have refined many of the design features based on valuable feedback from rehabilitation professionals."

Innovating for Consistency in Treating the Neck

Iron Neck fits comfortably on the head, just above the ears and grabs hold of the head through it's Air Bladder Inflation System beneath a soft foam. The resistance comes from connecting the free-gliding truck on the outer track of the Iron Neck either to a cable pulley or a resistance band (as seen below). What makes Iron Neck unique as a rehabilitation tool is that you can develop neck strength and core stability through a full range of motion against a controlled linear and rotational resistance.

"Iron Neck has been instrumental in our ability to treat our patients, strengthening the neck in ways that were previously impossible," says Trevor Shaw, a New York based chiropractor. "We can now provide protocols for 3 dimensional cervical stabilization which helps decrease pain and improve cervical lordosis."

Consistency in Research

There are several ongoing research studies that have included Iron Neck to implement neck strengthening consistently. A first-of-its-kind clinical trial by a research team at the University of Mississippi Medical Center aims to evaluate the effectiveness of aggressive physical therapy as “sensorimotor” training.

These research studies and the innovation seen this past year from rehabilitation professionals, are revealing new applications and treatment strategies with the Iron Neck. Simplifying the education and training process is important to ensuring proper form and position.

Learn Iron Neck on PT-Helper App

We have added six foundational Iron Neck exercises to the PT-Helper app. These movements are the building blocks to Iron Neck treatment protocols and provide a consistent, repeatable way to build neck strength and improve mobility and range of motion. We will be adding additional Iron Neck exercises later this month.

You can find all Iron Neck exercises within the Neck Category of PT-Helper's exercise catalog.

• Iron Neck 360 Spin

• Iron Neck Look Left Look Right

• Iron Neck Diagonal

• Iron Neck Protraction-Retraction

• Iron Neck Figure Eight

• Iron Neck Lock Neck Body Turn

About Iron Neck

The Iron Neck is a strength and mobility training device that allows for isometric training of the neck, back and core across a full range of motion.  It first hit the market in 2013 and has since been refined from a bulky strength training tool for college and NFL football teams to a rehabilitation tool for treating neck and back injuries in everyone from elite athletes to desk warriors to active aging individuals.

Visit www.iron-neck.com to learn more about Iron Neck for injury prevention, health and fitness, and rehabilitation. Try Iron Neck for FREE for 30 days.

Create a New Exercise Within the PT-Helper Mobile App

Why would you want to create a new exercise within the PT-Helper mobile app?

We have discovered that therapist, health and wellness professionals each have their own preferred and unique sets of exercises that they prescribe to their patients and clients. Many times these exercises will be similar to an exercise already within our available list of exercises and you would add the exercise to your Favorites list to represent the exercise that you need to complete. When doing the exercise, you would then follow the instructions of your health professional provided to you to do the exercise as they recommend.

However, if you can’t find an exercise that matches up with your prescribed exercise or you want to make an exercise whose name prompts you to easily recall the exercise, you can easily create a new exercise within the PT-Helper mobile app.

To create a new exercise with the mobile app, first select “Exercises by Category” on the home page and then select “Create An Exercise” at the top of the following page.

This will bring up the Create An Exercise form where you can enter the Exercise Name and Exercise Description. In this example, we will name the new exercise “Dumbbell Fly”.

You can then select “Exercise Category” which will identify where the app will place the newly created exercise should you need to find it in the future. For this example, we have selected “Fitness - Shoulders”.

     
You can then select “Exercise Details” to set the default exercise parameters for the new exercise. Hold Time corresponds to the time required to hold a stretch or the eccentric motion for a dynamic exercise. Recovery Time corresponds to the time between stretches or the concentric motion for a dynamic exercise. Rest Time is the rest period between sets.

 

Once you have entered the details of the new exercise, press “Confirm” on the Create An Exercise page to add the exercise to your local list of available exercises. You still need to add the new exercise to your Favorites list by selecting “Add to Favorites”.

Once the exercise has been added to your Favorites, you can use the camera symbol at the top left to add pictures and videos to the exercise to provide additional information on how to do the exercise correctly.

You now have a new exercise added to your Favorites list to help you complete your home exercises.

Happy exercising!

5 Reasons Why Your Back Pain Keeps Coming Back

Guest blog by Dennis Treubig

Over 80% of people will experience back pain at some point in their lives.  And many of those people will have recurring episodes of back pain.  The pain subsides, they think they’re out of the woods and then 6 months later it comes back.  And then it goes away….and then only 3 months later it comes back and now it’s not going away so fast.  And so on and so on.

And the person gets increasingly frustrated each time the pain comes back and now they worry about it happening just about every day.  They can’t enjoy the active lifestyle they once had because either they physically can’t do those things anymore or even if they can, they are afraid it will cause the pain to come back.

So why does the pain go away for a while and then come back?  Here are the 5 reasons I have come across most often in my 10+ years of treating athletes and active people:

1. You Haven’t Actually Done Anything To Fix the Problem

This is by far the most common reason people’s back pain cycles on and off.  When I meet people and tell them that what I do for a living (physical therapist), so many people go on to tell me about their back pain and how it’s annoying, frustrating, etc.  And when I ask them what they have done for it, the typical response is nothing…or just take some pain meds!

How can you expect your pain problem to get better if all you do for it is say a prayer at night and hope it will go away on its own!?

And the more people have talked to me about their back problem (really any problem), I realized that a lot of people choose not to do anything because they simply don’t know which of the many options out there is the best choice for them.  And they’re afraid of making the wrong decision or confused of even where to start.  So instead, they live in this paralyzed (not literally) state of indecision and continued pain that limits their active lifestyle. 

This is why I set up my clinic to offer a few different free options to help people BEFORE they commit to us.  It’s a way for people to learn what they can do for their problem and see what option works best for them.

2. The Treatment(s) You Got Didn't Address the Underlying Issue

For those people who got some form of treatment and the pain still comes back, there's a good chance that the treatment they got (i.e. injections, medications, bad PT, etc.) only took care of the symptoms/pain and didn't address the underlying reason for their problem.

It's like having someone help you bail water out of your sinking ship versus having someone help you plug the hole.  It's the difference between constantly having to worry about it happening again and being able to enjoy the things you love to do without worry.

3.You Didn't Follow Through With Your Treatment Plan and/or "Homework"

There are times when someone is getting a good treatment that is working on the underlying cause, but when they start to feel much better, they decide to stop the treatment plan early...and a few months later they're back in with a "flare-up."  And this "flare-up" may have been avoided had they saw their treatment plan all the way through and not quit just when the pain went away.  Remember, addressing the underlying issue is key!

Other times, people don't do their physical therapy "homework" - the tips and advice given to them to do on their own time.  If you see us 2 x week for an hour each time, that's only 2% of your entire week.  What you do in the other 98% will have a HUGE effect on your outcome.

4. You Progressed Your Activity Level Too Quickly

Another classic reason for someone's back pain to come back.  They start feeling a lot better so they decide that a 10 mile bike ride is ok to do...even though they haven't ridden in a couple months.  Or they're feeling good because they're finally back in the gym...and they decide the "boot camp" class that was going on that day was a good idea.  Or a friend asks them to do a charity 5k with them...it's for charity so it's ok, right!?

You're probably chuckling right now...not because the examples are that funny, but because you know you've been guilty of it.

I understand that when the pain starts to go away, you get excited to do things again, but you have to make sure it all makes sense with regards to your treatment plan - both short and long-term.

5. The Rest of Your Life Isn't Healthy

You don't sleep well.  You're stressed.  You work too much.  You don't eat well.  You're overweight.  You're out of shape.  You get the idea.

All those things play a role in your recovery and can affect your expected outcome - both amount of relief expected and the time it will take to get that relief.  If you can't get those things in control, the odds of a successful outcome go down...it's that simple (and I know that simple doesn't mean easy).

Dr. Dennis Treubig, PT, DPT, SCS, CSCS

Owner of Modern Sports Physical Therapy

Hello, my name is Dennis Treubig.  Since graduating from the University of Delaware (#1 PT school in the country), I have worked relentlessly to hone my skills and knowledge so that I can be the leading sports injury expert in the area.  Over the years, I have become one of the less than 1% of therapists who have attained the title of Board Certified Specialist in Sports Physical Therapy.

I founded Modern Sports Physical Therapy so that there would be a place where athletes and active people could go to quickly recover from their injury and get out of pain so they could get back to doing the things they love to do.