Although many people who take part in sport frequent physio therapists, the range of people who can benefit from their services range from people going through post operative rehabilitation to older persons who need to recover their mobility after extended periods of inactivity.
Regardless of who the client is, Tenson Edmunds of RVC Rehab, located at Chrissie Tomlinson Memorial Hospital, says helping them regain their quality of life is the most rewarding thing one can do.
Having worked with top level athletes both here and in Jamaica, Tenson admits that helping athletes reach their full potential is something close to his heart. However, he finds it even more rewarding to get someone moving again.
Even for those who are not injured, Tenson says that visiting a physio therapist can be a great help before they start out on a training programme. Long term inactivity can cause a need for smaller muscles to be strengthened before taking part in more strenuous activities, as not doing so can lead to injuries down the road. Even though the main muscle groups involved in an exercise like running or tennis may be worked by the exercise itself, the smaller muscles involved in stabilising the body are often too weak to do their job properly. This inevitably leads to injuries, and can be much more difficult to address after the fact than doing preventative training to strengthen these muscles.
Some examples include doing rotator cuff exercises before starting to go to the gym to do bench press, or strengthening the vastus medialis (the teardrop-shaped muscle on the inside of the upper leg, just above the knee) before engaging in activities like tennis or squash.
Especially when it comes to rehabilitation of patients who require special assistance, RVC has a couple of advantages.
They specialise among other things in post operative recovery, and can help patients start work on their range of motion and strengthening shortly after they leave the operating room, leading to quicker and more complete recovery. They have access to a heated pool in which patients can work on their movement without the effect of gravity holding them back, meaning that those who have been weakened can work on their walking and other movement without needing the strength to remain standing. It allows patients to take an active role in their own recovery.
However, even this has limitations, as people with sores and open wounds cannot use the pool. This is why the facility has also added a harness that allows the weight of a patient to be supported while still allowing a full range of motion in the lower body, thus making it possible to gradually increase the resistance as the patient’s strength increases. Even more importantly, the harness removes the fear of falling and causing an injury, which Tenson says is the biggest reason many older people stop moving about in the first place.
“Once you take away the fear, you can give them back their mobility,” he says.
What this means, according to Tenson, is that mobility can be attained at any stage of life, and this is the greatest determinant of quality of life.
For more information on RVC Rehab Services, call 949-6024.