As mentioned above, there are many ways in which a physical therapist can support a football player. Here are some of the services that we offer to players to support them in their careers as a player:

Injury Rehabilitation

Physical therapists are trained extensively in injury rehabilitation. As a high impact sport, football players are at risk for experiencing injuries that can impact their ability to continue playing. These injuries can occur during practice, during games and even in the training room. Some examples of injuries that physical therapists treat in football players are as follows:

• Ligament sprains
• Muscle strains
• Muscle contusions
• Ligament tears (ACL, MCL, etc)
• Fractures
• Concussions

While it may be tempting to self-treat and to jump back into practices and competitive play as soon as possible, failure to fully rehabilitate an injury can predispose you to recurrent injuries. There are several benefits related to injury and post-surgical rehabilitation that working with a physical therapist can provide you including assurance that you are fully recovered from the injury and that the injured tissues are prepared to take on the unique forces and stresses associated with football.

If you have taken off some time or decreased your training in response to signs of pain or injury, your symptoms may have improved due to a lower training load but it does not guarantee that symptoms won’t recur once you increase your training load again. With proper rehabilitation we can help minimize this risk. This leads us to another way that working with a physical therapist can benefit a football player…

If you decide to work with a physical therapist to help with football related issues, your entire treatment plan could consist of around 8-20+ different physical therapy for back pain sessions that will each last 60-90 minutes. Once you complete your customized physical therapy treatment plan, you will be able to continue to do the prescribed stretches and exercises utilized during your PT sessions yet in the comfort of your own home.

Looking for the cause of an injury

While full recovery and return to play is the ultimate goal when it comes to injury rehabilitation, a physical therapist has much more to offer. We are interested in identifying the factors that may have predisposed you to the injury in the first place so that we can make a plan to address them. This helps decrease your risk for future injury. Here are some factors that we look for when assessing a player:

• Muscle strength, power and endurance
• Flexibility and mobility in muscles and joints
• Sleep, nutrition and recovery time
• Training schedule
• History of prior injury
• The physical demands of a player’s position on the team

While some injuries are unavoidable, there may be times when internal and external factors play a role. Identifying these factors allows us to address them with a good physical therapy program or give advice on beneficial modifications to your training.

Movement and Performance Analyses