[vc_row][vc_column width="1/1"][vc_column_text]By: Active Sports Therapy
What is Athletic Therapy
Most people think of Athletic Therapy as immediate sideline assistance and emergency medical coverage at sporting events, but Athletic Therapists also work with athletes to treat and rehabilitate injuries. Athletic Therapists specialize in returning injured athletes back to pre-injury performance levels. With extensive education and training in the areas of the musculoskeletal system, exercise physiology and biomechanics, Athletic Therapists create an individualized plan to address your specific injury and athletic needs.
There are other areas of expertise that an Athletic Therapist can provide. So what can an Athletic Therapist do to help you?
Prevent – help prevent injuries through conditioning or exercise programs, creating injury prevention warm-up programs, patient education, equipment selection or using taping or bracing techniques.
Assess – evaluating an injury and establishing a plan of action.
Provide Emergency Care – Athletic Therapists are the first medical practitioners on the scene when an injury takes place at a sporting event. They are trained to provide basic emergency life support, and manage serious injuries to help prepare the individual to be transferred to more urgent care.
Rehabilitation – Helping people return to their pre-injury condition, an Athletic Therapist employs active approaches to rehabilitation. They may use movement therapies, targeted exercises, and other modalities as needed.
Recondition – Reconditioning is the holistic process of improving human movement potential by integrating the strengths of performance coaching and therapeutic practice. Individuals get rapid, effective and long-lasting results because the practitioners address the root cause of injuries and provide complete solution sets. Each solution set is uniquely tailored to the person and context of his/her situation.
Utilizing the Sports Medicine Model, a Certified Athletic Therapist CAT(C) can help with the following types of injuries or concerns:
- Common injuries that result from one’s daily activity or sport, such as muscle strains, sprains, shin splints, and tendinopathies.
- Chronic painful conditions.
- Pre-surgery and post-surgery rehabilitation and recovery.
- Manage and treat injuries and emergency situations at sporting events, including sprains, fractures, dislocations, cuts, muscle strains, spinal injuries, concussions and medical emergencies.
- Injuries that resulted in the workplace.
- Motor vehicle accidents.
Don’t consider yourself an athlete? Whether you’re an elite level athlete or a weekend warrior, an Athletic Therapist can help you get back to doing what you love.
The Canadian Athletic Therapists Association has coined the term ‘Rapid Return to Work & Play,’ and our Athletic Therapist at Active Sports Therapy works to deliver on this goal.
Learn more about our CAT(C) Crystal Bartkowski
*This blog is not intended to officially establish a physician-patient relationship, to replace the services of a trained physician, naturopathic doctor, physical therapist or chiropractor or otherwise to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
References: The Canadian Association of Athletic Therapists www.athletictherapy.org[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
