The primary goal of both sports and regular physical therapy is to relieve pain and restore function. The main differences lie in the goals of the individuals we treat. In regular physical therapy, Precision Performance and Therapy’s goal is often to improve mobility, increase strength, improve balance, and decrease pain to restore or improve general functional activity so that individuals can go through their daily life without limitation. This may include activities such as sitting at work, doing house or yardwork, putting on a shirt, or looking over your shoulder to drive. If it is something that affects your everyday life, it is more than likely something that is treated in regular physical therapy. Unlike sports physical therapy, which is tailored for performance, regular physical therapy prioritizes improving functional independence while helping individuals regain quality of life after suffering from pain, injury, or surgery.

Sports physical therapy to tailored to athletes and/or highly active individuals who either sustain injuries related to sports or physical activity and/or have an end goal of getting back to performing activities at a higher level. Sports physical therapy has a goal of helping individuals return to or go beyond their pre-injury performance level as quickly and safely as possible. In sports physical therapy at Precision Performance and Therapy, athletes are helped to not only alleviate pain, but also improve strength, flexibility, endurance, coordination, and movement performance more specific to the athlete’s sport and activity. An athlete’s goals go beyond everyday activity and often require higher-intensity rehabilitation and performance enhancement, ensuring that patients can resume their athletic activities without compromising their overall health and performance.

Truthfully, the characteristics of both sports physical therapy and regular physical therapy patients at Precision Performance and Therapy can be very similar when it comes to age, gender, ethnicity, etc. We provide physical therapy in Meridian, Idaho to men and women, girls and boys, young and old. We provide sports physical therapy in Meridian, Idaho to men and women, girls and boys, young and old.

The biggest difference in the patient population is not in the demographics, it is in how they label themselves. Regular physical therapy patients may have a balanced lifestyle that includes physical activity, but while recreational sports and physical activity may be a part of their life, it is not a primary focus in their life. The concern with pain, injury, and limitation and how it affects what they do on a daily basis is what matters most.

Sports physical therapy patients have athletics or sport, whether at a professional, amateur, or recreational level that is a much bigger priority and takes up a much greater part of their life. The sports physical therapy patients we see at Precision Performance and Therapy label themselves as active athletes and losing out on the ability to participate in their activity, whether that be in competition or even just getting a workout in at the gym is a significant loss. The patient population in sports physical therapy not only wants to improve their pain or injury limitation, they also want to improve overall functional ability and performance in sport.

The primary goal of both sports and regular physical therapy is to relieve pain and restore function. The main differences lie in the goals of the individuals we treat. In regular physical therapy, Precision Performance and Therapy’s goal is often to improve mobility, increase strength, improve balance, and decrease pain to restore or improve general functional activity so that individuals can go through their daily life without limitation. This may include activities such as sitting at work, doing house or yardwork, putting on a shirt, or looking over your shoulder to drive. If it is something that affects your everyday life, it is more than likely something that is treated in regular physical therapy. Unlike sports physical therapy, which is tailored for performance, regular physical therapy prioritizes improving functional independence while helping individuals regain quality of life after suffering from pain, injury, or surgery.

Sports physical therapy to tailored to athletes and/or highly active individuals who either sustain injuries related to sports or physical activity and/or have an end goal of getting back to performing activities at a higher level. Sports physical therapy has a goal of helping individuals return to or go beyond their pre-injury performance level as quickly and safely as possible. In sports physical therapy at Precision Performance and Therapy, athletes are helped to not only alleviate pain, but also improve strength, flexibility, endurance, coordination, and movement performance more specific to the athlete’s sport and activity. An athlete’s goals go beyond everyday activity and often require higher-intensity rehabilitation and performance enhancement, ensuring that patients can resume their athletic activities without compromising their overall health and performance.

Overloaded, overstressed, overuse, repetitive stress, degenerative, hereditary, or trauma induced are all ways that pain and injury can be brought on. Knowing how and what led to the onset of pain is an important part of treating pain. You can’t always determine the cause (truthfully less often than you would think) of the onset of the pain, but having some awareness of what is causing the pain to present can be invaluable in knowing what needs to be done to treat it.

The best way to explain this is to provide examples of how patients describe to me when they noticed the onset of pain. Examples of my regular physical therapy patients are:

“I started to notice the pain in my neck and shoulder when I was sitting at my computer.”

“My back was sore after I was bent over doing yardwork. I thought it would get better, but it hasn’t gone away.”

Examples of my sports physical therapy patients describing the onset of pain are:

“I noticed my hip would start hurting after running about 1 to 1.5 miles. I rested for about a week and then tried to run again, but the pain came back after about a mile.”

“At first, my shoulder was fine when I was at volleyball practice, but it would start to hurt after. Then it started to get worse, and I would have pain when hitting overhead while at volleyball practice.”

“I went to plant my foot and turn to sprint up the court and I felt a pull in the front of my thigh.”

Regular physical therapy patients have pain and injury that is often a result of everyday activity, and it limits everyday activity. Sports physical therapy patients have pain and injury that is most often a result of a sports injury, and it most often limits sports activity even though it can also affect everyday activity. Sports physical therapy patients often complain of pain and limitation attached to their activity participation.

What an individual needs to be able to achieve is relative to the activity demands that they want to be able to consistently do. While I encourage (and always will) my patients to develop and maintain a consistent level of physical activity to improve strength, endurance, and health, my regular physical therapy patients do not need to be expected to meet the same physical demands as my sports physical therapy patients. My regular physical therapy patients want to be able to function in everyday activity. The necessary flexibility, strength, and endurance need to be that to match their everyday life.

On the flip side, if my sport therapy patients only met the demands of everyday activity, they would not be successful in returning to the level of competition or sport and they would be setting themselves up to have continued limitation and potential further injury.

For example, my regular physical therapy patient only needs adequate balance to walk and navigate stairs, etc safely and efficiently. My sports physical therapy patient needs adequate balance and body control in multiple planes (multiple directions of movement) along with applied external perturbation forces to prepare them for what they will see on the sports surface.

In the rehabilitation world, for athletes there is not many things more frustrating than being treated like a regular (and the same feeling for regular physical therapy patients being treated like athletes) physical therapy patient. Sports physical therapy takes an understanding of the individual and the sport. For successful rehabilitation, it is important to be able to break down the sport, the movements requirements, and the techniques to improve them while taking into consideration the characteristics and abilities of the individual who is being treated.

While the basic principles of physical therapy, such as strengthening exercises, manual therapy, and stretching, are common to both sports and regular physical therapy, the approaches taken can differ significantly.

The treatment techniques of regular physical therapy focus more on restoring basic functional movements, pain relief, and improving mobility. Manual therapy and exercise programs are typically aimed at reducing pain, improving mobility, strengthening weaknesses, improving balance, and improving postural stability to improve basic daily activities. For example, an exercise like a squat is used to improve strength to help walking or the ability to sit down and stand up, both of which are important parts of everyday life.

Sports physical therapy incorporates more advanced sport specific rehabilitation techniques. Exercises are often movement and sport specific, and the exercises mimic the movements of the sport activity. Sports physical therapy includes strength and conditioning that go beyond the treatments of manual therapy and exercise for the specific area of pain. For example, a baseball player who is rehabbing a shoulder will perform activities to improve balance, trunk control, along with shoulder mobility and strength (among other things).

There are only so many treatment techniques and exercises to use to help rehabilitate an individual. The difference in how they are used to treat an individual is the difference between regular physical therapy and sports physical therapy.

The intensity of physical therapy often depends on the nature of the injury or condition being treated, but as a therapy program progresses throughout the course of treatment, sports physical therapy often involves a higher level of intensity, and this combined with the pressure of the timetable to return to sport can influence the rehabilitation process.

Regular physical therapy focuses on gradual recovery. Based on the initial ability level of the individual, physical therapy may have to start at a very light level with progression based on the capabilities of the patient. Because individuals may be starting out with a low baseline, it can take a while to get to functional levels. At the same time, the lower level demand of daily activity (when compared to sport activity) may mean that while intensity levels are often lower, time to recovery can still be in a short period of time.

Sports physical therapy treatments are often more intense. This is especially true when there is a small timetable for return to sport. Sports physical therapy can be more intense because the baseline capabilities of the individual are often much higher, and the treatment progressions need to build up to the demands of the sport.  To meet performance expectations, sports physical therapy patients need to rehab at a higher intensity to meet goals.

There are similarities and differences in the mental and emotional components of rehabilitation for regular and sports physical therapy patients. For both fear is important to be aware of. Fear of pain. Fear of loss of ability. Fear of return of limitation after recovery. With this being said, the psychological components of treatment and the motivation for recovery differ between sports physical therapy and regular physical therapy.

When treating regular physical therapy patients, a therapist must consider broader life stresses and emotional distress related to difficulties in daily life. This can include injury and pain disruptions to everyday life, family, or work. The most significant motivation is often to be able to participate in normal daily activity without limitation. There are often specific things that my regular physical therapy patients want to be able to do everyday that they can’t because of the injury or pain.

In sports physical therapy, not only must a therapist consider life stresses, they must also consider the stress of the sport (performance, self, coaches, teammates, etc). Athletes may or may not have disruptions to everyday life, but they are experiencing disruptions with the sports activities and to an athlete, these are a high priority. It is important to understand the motivation for returning to sport, but also it is important to monitor the athlete’s mental state and help keep the athlete motivated.