Aquatic Physical Therapy

Aquatic Physical Therapy francishealth.org

Aquatic Physical Therapy

What is Aquatic Therapy?

For patients who are in pain & weak due to injury or disability, aquatic therapy offers the perfect solution to start treatment. Therapy sessions are carried out at ATI pools. Natural water buoyancy reduces stress on the body and helps patients exercise more easily with less pain. Plus, natural pressure from water reduces swelling of joints and soft tissues and provides enough resistance to strengthen muscles.

Benefits of Aquatic Physical Therapy

Aquatic therapy can be useful for a number of different patients and is not used for specific diagnoses, but is used to address certain problems that patients may experience including:

- Balance and coordination

- Strengthening muscles

- Function / mobility

Increase flexibility

One reason aquatic therapy can be beneficial to patients is because water absorbs most of the pressure that our body usually gives to the joints. By doing physical therapy in water, the body becomes lighter and also reduces the amount of stress in your joints.

Aquatic therapy is usually used for patients who:

- It is not permissible to hold full loads but must work by walking

- Need to work in jumps or landings but cannot tolerate high impact activities

- Healed from surgery

- is experiencing acute lower back pain and cannot stand and walk

It is an athlete and needs to break down exercise-specific exercises in a more controlled environment

Physical therapists at UPMC Sports Medicine have used aquatic therapy with patients over the past 15 years & therapists in the new UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex will also incorporate aquatic therapy into care. The new complex will have the ability to assess patients with underwater cameras and monitors who will provide feedback on their performance.

Aquatic Therapy for Athletes

Realizing the other potential benefits of aquatic therapy on strength & conditioning, experts at the new UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex have begun to include it in recommendations for strength training plans. Water sports allow healthy athletes to undergo higher intensity training while reducing the risk of post-exercise injury and pain.

Pat Garvey, DPT, director of facilities at UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex said, "Strength coaches like water training because the impact on the athlete's body decreases so much that they can do intense training for several days in a row. Water is more resistant to air, so water training for 30 minutes has the potential to be as effective as at least two hours, intense dry land training. "

Initially many people doubted the benefits of this exercise because they imagined nagging around and playing in the pool. However, water training is far from easy. Take the example of the exercise below:

Heating

Jumping in a pool also makes your body move. Whatever you can do to increase your heart rate will succeed. We recommend walking or swimming a few turns if your pool is large enough. If your pool is smaller, try jumping jacks or mountain climbers.

Aquatic Physical Therapy oalthehealth.org

The next part of your practice will depend on your specific goals.

- For speed, try the running interval

- 15 seconds running at 90% of effort

- Sprint 5 seconds with 100% effort

- 18 knees second height at 100% effort

- To strengthen and try agility

- kick forward

- Side kick

- Lunges

- Squat jump

With proper preparation, almost all dryland exercises can be adapted for your water training. There are a number of plans available online, but we recommend contacting your athletic trainer, physical therapist, or other expert before starting training.

Terminology in aquatic physical therapy

This is an aquatic physical therapy network. We chose this name to be in line with the World Confederation for Physical Therapy. Physical water therapy or aquatic physiotherapy is also still known as hydrotherapy.

The Aquatic Therapy Association of Chartered Physiotherapists (ATACP, UK) wrote in 2008: "before 2008 aquatic physiotherapy was called 'hydrotherapy' in the UK. The reason for the change in water physiotherapy was to double:

to be in line with international aquatic physical therapy, and

to utilize protected term physiotherapy. "

ATACP defines aquatic physical therapy as: "A therapeutic program that utilizes the properties of water, which is designed by qualified physiotherapists who are specifically suited to an individual to improve function, carried out by appropriately trained personnel, ideally in building goals & hydrotherapy pools which is heated appropriately. "(ATACP, 2008). Also the South Africa Aquatic Physiotherapy Group (2009) uses a very similar definition: "Aquatic physiotherapy is physiotherapy that uses more than one unique characteristic of water for therapeutic rehabilitation".

The definition of the Netherlands, used in the Dutch Allied Health Care Center (NPI) program, namely: "Aquatic (Physical) Therapy is a program that uses the mechanical and thermal characteristics of water during partial or complete immersion, combined with the effects of movement. This evokes a short-term adaptation mechanism and the long term of someone with a crazy biological system, using special stimuli to create biological effects and thus therapeutic.

Jenny Geytenbeek as the author of the Guide to the Practice of Aquatic Physiotherapy (2008), published by the National Aquatic Physiotherapy Group of the Australian Physiotherapy Association, provides the following definitions and explanations:

"" Aquatic Physiotherapy "refers to the special practice of physiotherapy, with therapeutic intentions for the rehabilitation or achievement of specific individual physical & functional goals using water media. This differs from the more general term" hydrotherapy "which connotes any water-based therapy carried out by various professional specialties , including soaking in warm water, soaking in mineral water (balneotherapy and spa therapy), soaking in turbulent warm water (spa) therapy), application of pressurized water to the external body (whirlpool), application of warm water into the large intestine (colon irrigation) ), the application of water to various temperatures and pressures through bathing and towels (Kneipp therapy), and movement based water therapy (hydrokinesiotherapy). "Aquatic therapy" also refers to water-based therapeutic activities, which are common in American literature, and include practices for example physical therapists, sports therapists, nurses, and sports instructors. "Water training" has training intentions fitness is good for healthy and symptomatic individuals, and "water sports" is a synonym. "

Aquatic physical therapy can be applied in all three dimensions of International Classification of Function, Disability & Health (World Health Organization, 2001). The fourth dimension is Quality of Life, also an important goal in Aquatic Physical Therapy.

Aquatic Physical Therapy aqua4balance.com

Physical water therapy may also be helpful in treating several conditions of modern lifestyles as well. A special edition of Theory and Practice of Physiotherapy entitled 'Physiotherapy practices in the 21st century: paradigms and implications of new evidence', identifies topics such as nutrition and weight control, continuity of physical activity and exercise, management of sleep disorders and undue stress of life. . Evidence is still rare, but problems such as obesity (Nagle 2007), adherence (Kang 2007), management of sleep patterns (Vitorino 2006) and stress reduction (Bood 2009) have been discussed in aquatic literature, see also chapter on immersion physiology and autonomic nervous system.

Aquatic physical therapy exercises

Aquatic physical therapy has a great focus on sports in water that can include the following things used in isolation or in combination:

- Balance training

- Strengthen and stabilize

- Cardiovascular conditioning

- Adjustable swimming

Flexibility or training for various movements

Aquatic exercises are determined specifically for participants who take the assessment to identify the main problems also include the integration of evidence-based practices along with joint goal setting. Prescription specificity of exercise remains a high priority together and further considers the dose response to aquatic physical therapy. Focus must be continued on measuring results to measure effectiveness and objective measures to improve accuracy of load estimates. Examples are metronomes or music for speed and endurance of turbulence, buoy volumes for buoyancy that resist exercise, repetition and set and size of cardiovascular load. The use of outcome measures and objective measures will facilitate the transition from practice to research and vice versa. Almost all aquatic approaches and exercises offer immediate benefits for stabilizing or strengthening. Endurance training in aquatic physiotherapy can have very good results. A clear protocol with a progressive burden, understanding environmental physics and measuring strength are important.

Aquatic environment is ideal for cardiovascular training not only for sports populations or basic musculoskeletal rehabilitation but also in chronic conditions with documented support in patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis (Hall et al 2004), chronic low back pain (Barker et al 2003) and stroke ( Driver et al 2004). The nature of each chronic condition often reduces mobility and then reduces VO2 max. By continuing research into this field, consideration must be given to all chronic patients to plan parts of each session to overcome their increase in VO2 max. The aquatic environment can be a safe medium of training from falls or injuries, it can also be very challenging over the edge of the balance including practice in a single foot position. Greater movement from the center of gravity, limb therapy is a useful therapy but it is not clear whether there is an influence on the fear of falling. Special balance for the environment and assignments but aquatic programs have shown a transition into land-based actions.

The adjustable swimmer includes all possible scratches. Adapted exercise not only offers cardiovascular training, musculoskeletal challenges in terms of endurance and range of movement, but the most important thing is to offer so much to do with participation.