When a person is hurt, whether on the job or at home, everyone’s goal is to reduce their pain and symptoms as soon as possible and to get them their range of motion back to restore their well-being. This can be accomplished by multiple means that often compliment each other.

The two main approaches to physical therapy are as follows:

Passive Physical Therapy

Is when the therapist does something to or for you and you passively receive that treatment. This can include heat, ice packs or electrotherapy like TENS machines or other electrical treatments. This also includes things like massage, acupuncture, joint manipulation or assisted mobilization.

Passive physical therapy might be most often prescribed immediately after a surgery or injury when a very high level of pain or inhibition of motion is being experienced. It can be considered the “entry point” to a full course of physical therapy.

Active Physical Therapy

In contrast, active physical therapy are therapies in which you, the patient, plays the role of a partner in your own treatment. Your therapist will recommend, teach and coach you through the proper practice of active physical exercises and then modify them appropriately as your condition improves.

This will include some or all of the following:

Therapeutic Exercise

Your therapist will evaluate the problem areas and design a program designed to improve your pain, symptoms and range of motion by strengthening parts of your body. Counterintuitively these will sometimes not be the direct area in which pain is experienced, for example, when core strengthening exercises are prescribed for back pain, but your therapist has been trained in the body’s systems and how they work properly together.

Active Manual Therapy

When appropriate, your therapist will provide you with a hands-on approach to treatment in which they will manually apply guidance and resistance as a means to train and strengthen your body as it goes through specific exercises designed to reduce pain, increase strength, range of motion, and flexibility.

Education and Self-Sufficiency

This topic should be considered along with the idea of “teaching a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”. Your physical therapist, by teaching you how to reduce your own pain, improve your mobility, recovery and quality of life plays the role of a health educator, empowering you to have a sense of control over your own body and destiny.

It’s a partnership in which YOU are the most important partner!

Your doctor and therapists can only come in alongside you, no one can “do” physical therapy for another person, ultimately it’s up to the patient to begin and complete their prescribed course of physical therapy. That being said, everyone has the same goal and that’s the patient’s wellbeing, as soon as is reasonably possible.

Proactive Physical Therapy > Passive

As a provider, Southern California Sports Rehabilitation is biased towards the “results oriented”, proACTIVE physical therapy end of the spectrum. While passive physical therapy has its place (and we do, of course, offer it), in the treatment of chronic, non-cancer pain, active physical therapy is always the first course of action.

“In pain management, active treatments should be the primary focus, with passive interventions as an adjunct.” – ref.

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