Can I go back to the gym ?

  When can I go back to the gym ?  Is it OK to do bar squats or lift weights overhead ? Can I stretch my hamstrings ? These are questions I get from my patients that I generally dread and am a little hesitant to answer right away. Why ?  For one thing, I can almost always be certain that they would be doing this with their muscles in the wrong " Position". As a Postural Restoration trained  physical therapist, I focus on making sure that muscles are in the right position before progressing with a rehab program or any training program for that matter. If any muscle is not in the right position, it will never be able to be as strong and effective as when it would be if it was in the right position. ( Please refer to Torin's blog-"The importance of being in the right position" on hruskaclinic.com.). When this happens, other muscles will compensate to do the movement which puts you at risk for injury. Now don't get me wrong, that does not mean that you can never go back to a gym program; you can but only after you are in the right
"Position". How can you do that ? By going through a Repositioning program that your Postural restoration trained/certified physical therapist can show you. Once repositioned, and able to maintain that correct alignment with the proper muscles firing along with turning off certain muscles that have a tendency to be overused, you can go back to a gym or training program ( or for that matter, running or any sport) with  a few tips ( do's and dont's) from your therapist. We'll talk more in the next few blogs about some common exercises and training routines that can cause more harm than good in the wrong run. In the meantime, try to find help from a PRI therapist to get in the right "Position".
Sangini Rane , PT PRC
sangini@yahoo.com
Apex Physical Therapy & Wellness Center
Apex, NC