Hold on to your horses kiddies
ahhchon said:
deloading is not something all therapist know about. it's sad really. where are you going for pt. i can check out their website to get an idea if the clinic is any good. what kind of degrees does your pt have?
deloading is to take stress off your back. if you're in the office push up with your arms onto the armrest of the chairs. this will elevate your rear off the chair and help unload the disk. at home you can hang a bath towel over the corner of a strong door. grab both ends of the towel with each hand, put the door between your legs and just hang down and hold your body weight up with your arms.
give me your e-mail, i can take pictures of myself doing it and send them to you.
get up and walk around once awhile at the office (assuming you work in an office). riding a little is ok, i would avoid all climbs, they strsess the iliopsoas mm a good deal and it's origin is the lower lumbar spine.
john
Not trying to belittle your SPT status or your soon to be DPT, but you need to slow down and look at the bigger picture here!
If you can tell what kind of care that you will be getting by looking at some web site then you are a much better person than I!
Our web site does not list all of our clinical certifications, and even if it did, there is little way to know the care you are going to receive when you get there. I would much rather be worked on by a BS with 20 years under his belt than somebody straight out of school with his DPT.
I, along with many other manual therpists do not put a lot of stock in "unloading". Once upon a time traction was the silver bullet, any good therapist will tell you that it is a good tool from time to time, however, it has really fallen out of favor in many areas. I would much rather put the effort into his posturing and his segmental stability than "unloading".
When we climb, we tend to forward flex and kick in our muscles much more than in other situations. Yes, the Psoas is likely tugging on the segments and he is not able to stabilize
these secondary to likely having deficient strength and control at those segments.
I don't think that there is any reason that he should stop riding all together, in fact this may be counter productive. If the positioning of riding alone were evoking his radic sx's, then I would have him stop. If he is able to ride and only bring on sx's when he is getting after it while climbing, then I would avoid the aggrevating activity.
SMR did not mention if the pain he was getting was even radicular in nature. It could be that he has some OA type sx's and he is just getting the arthritic type stiffness. It would be nice to hear a bit more about his sx's so that we could give him a better direction.
