Twitter post of Sean “P. Diddy” Combs using the AlterG AntiGravity Treadmill
The Perfect Solution for Recovering Athletes
If you’re a Brooklyn athlete and recently sustained an injury or underwent surgery on your lower body we have the perfect solution to get you running sooner. The AlterG Anti Gravity Treadmill uses NASA’s patented Differential Air Pressure Technology to “unweight” you, making it possible to run at a fraction of your body weight. You’ll be able to improve your aerobic conditioning and put less stress on your joints – hips, knees, and ankles – while maintaining strength and endurance.
Not Just for Athletes
The AlterG can also benefit:
Senior Citizens looking to stay active
People with obesity looking workout and lose weight
Anyone with past injuries or arthritis looking to workout with less impact and stress on their joints
Rates & Monthly Memberships
Your first 30-minute trial run is only $20.00 (normally $25.00). Call 718.230.1180 to schedule your first run!
Time
Price
Under 30 Minutes
$1.00/minute
30 Minutes
$25.00
30 Minutes – Three Scheduled Sessions
$50.00
Monthly Memberships
Price
Up to 45 minutes – Three Scheduled Sessions Per Week
$100.00
Up to 90 minutes – Three Scheduled Sessions Per Week
Married couple, Michael and Lila R., are longtime patients of Park Sports Physical Therapy. Michael is a lifelong athlete having run 26 marathons during his lifetime. He has also been a member of the Prospect Park Track Club, a local running club in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Michael has over 30 years of running under his belt. That’s a whole lot of miles!
His wife Lila, also an athlete, has spent most of her life swimming and running.
Lila’s first experience at Park Sports started back in 2011. She came in with a rotator cuff condition. One of our therapists treated her and got her back to swimming fairly quickly. Lila recommended her husband, Michael also get treated at Park Sports after her positive experience.
Michael suffered from arthritis in both his knees. It was when he tripped and injured his iliotibial band that he came in for treatment. He was feeling a snapping sensation whenever he would walk up and down stairs.
Kristin Romeo, DPT became both Michael’s and Lila’s therapist, often times seeing them at the same time for treatment. For Michael, Kristin used manual therapy, stretching, strengthening exercises, and worked on improving his balance on the injured leg.
During the interview, Michael and Lila spoke very highly of Kristin, saying “Kristin is attentive, listens to your needs, and makes sure that the problem area is getting the right treatment.”
“The sessions hold me accountable,” Michael mentioned. The exercises have helped him greatly throughout his treatment. He’s progressed to the point where he no longer feels any snapping sensation walking down the stairs.
Lila similarly was very pleased with her progress.
Michael and Lila, being older in age, both realize the importance of maintaining balance to avoid falls. Physical therapy has proven to be quite useful in that regard.
Both Michael and Lila recommend the services at Park Sports highly saying, “almost all our friends in the neighborhood go to Park Sports for physical therapy. This is a great place that offers excellent care. The therapists that work here are excellent. We couldn’t be happier with Kristin’s care.”
Physical Therapists play an essential role in the nonsurgical treatment of hip pain. Two of the most common conditions associated with hip pain are labral tears and hip impingement.
Labral Tears
Labral tears occur when the labrum, which is the cartilage that comes between the head of the femur – your thigh bone – and your pelvis – your hip bone, begins to wear down or experiences trauma. The most common cause of labral tears is repetitive stress on the hip joint, especially for athletes participating in running and skating sports.
Original Image Source: https://www.moveforwardpt.com/symptomsconditionsdetail.aspx?cid=fabdfb4e-5fb5-4077-b341-df5d04a93605
Hip Impingement
Hip impingement, also known as femoroacetabular impingement (FAI), occurs when extra bone grows on either or both the head of the femur or the acetabulum (the part of the pelvis where the femur meets – the “socket”). The extra bone creates an irregular fit and can start to rub against the cartilage or bones in a way that can damage the joint causing hip pain.
There are 2 types of hip impingement. They can occur separately or together.
Original image source: https://orthoinfo.aaos.org/en/diseases–conditions/femoroacetabular-impingement/
Cam-type Impingement
The head of the femur is shaped like a sphere. It acts as the “ball” for “ball and socket” joint in your the hips. In this deformity, an excessive bone growth around the head of the femur creates an irregular shape that makes it difficult to rotate in the acetabulum, your “socket”.
The misshapen overgrowth contacts the cartilage that lines the hip socket, the labrum, and can cause it to become worn and frayed. This can lead to hip instability and pain.
Pincer-type Impingement
Pincer impingement is when the acetabulum (hip socket) protrudes around the femur head, decreasing the space of the joint. Overtime with repetitive contact, hip flexion (bending over, sitting, walking) leads to tearing and inflammation of the cartilage that envelopes and protects the joint (labrum).
Symptoms
With either one of these conditions you may experience:
Increased pain with prolonged sitting and leaning forward in the sitting position.
Sharp pain during squatting, changing direction during running, pivoting and lateral motions./li>
Stiffness and deep aching in the front of the hip. Occasional groin pain.
Decrease ability to turn your thigh inward.
Treating Hip Pain with Physical Therapy
Treatment of hip pain starts with a comprehensive evaluation of movement of your hip and surrounding joints.
Our therapists will test the strength of the muscles around your hip and observe your movements to properly diagnose the condition. During each session, our therapists will instruct and educate you about your body mechanics, the origin of your injury, and exercises you can perform to prevent future injury to the hip and strengthen the muscles around the hip and other parts of your body to stabilize and correct any imbalances.
Your orthopedic doctor may order X-rays and an MRI to confirm the diagnosis.
Hip impingement and labral tears may be concurrent with lower back pain and pelvic floor dysfunction.
Once your weaknesses and imbalances are identified, the goal of therapy is to restore normal force coupling and to develop strategies to compensate if your condition is chronic.
Strengthening of weak muscles and stretching tight muscles can help to avoid the progression of hip impingement. Manual therapy techniques may also be employed restore flexibility of the joint.
At Park Sports Physical Therapy, one of our therapists, Svetlana Lazarev, PT, is an advance hip clinician certified by the Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS).
Hip Arthroscopy Post Operative Rehabilitation
If you do end up having surgery for your hip pain, our therapists follow an established post-surgical protocol. Physical therapy is known to shorten recovery time and ensures that your body is healing properly. Our therapists help to promote safe healing by limiting the weight you put on the operated leg, exercises, stretching, and manual therapy.
The next stage of postoperative rehabilitation focuses on improving your range of motion and strength. During your treatment, our physical therapists can keep your doctor and orthopedic surgeon informed of your progress if you choose.
After 4 to 6 months of treatment following surgery, you’ll be able to return to your normal activities.
Do you currently suffer from hip pain? We can help.
Race day is approaching. You put months of training and during that time, in ideal world, there would be no lingering soreness, no twinges. Are you worried about some long-standing maladies caused by overtraining? Do you think that there were other factors like body inefficiencies or misalignments that led to soreness, pain, even injury during your race prep? In reality, most runners have some issues that vary in severity. The running pain spectrum is wide.
Sports and Orthopedic Physical Therapist is trained and equipped to help runners to avoid or recover from most running injuries. I listed some conditions we treat at Park Sports Physical Therapy in the order of their frequency:
Anterior knee pain, or Patella Femoral Pain Syndrome is the most common one, in some studies it was reported that it constitutes close to 40 percent of all running injuries. It is caused by biomechanical factors that increase load on the knee. Those factors are: excessive foot inward rolling (overpronation), weakness in quads and hip muscles, hip rotational deformity and disproportional stride lengths.
Achilles tendinitis most common in runners over age 30. It is most commonly caused by high or low arches, tight hip flexors, weak trunk. These factors lead to overtraining that contribute to the tendon inflammation.Plantar fasciitis is often caused by the same factors that contribute to Achilles tendinitis. Some studies showed that it is correlated to the lower back pain.
Less common are Illiotibial Band Syndrome, Shin splints and Metatarsal Stress Fractures.
Physical Therapist can help you to become a smarter and stronger runner by evaluating your functional mobility and movement patterns. We can help you design a specific exercises and stretches to address those issues.
A running injury specialist in Brooklyn isn’t easy to find. Fortunately, you’ve come to the right place.
As we mentioned in our last post, running injuries are common and it’s important to see a healthcare provider that specializes in running injury evaluation and treatment and understands the challenges and demands of distance runners. Click here to review that post.
One of Our Secret Weapons to Optimize Running Injury Recovery
Our AlterG Anti-Gravity Treadmill can help elevate your physical therapy treatment program to a new level.
When you’re recovering from an injury (especially a running injury), the force of gravity actually works against you during this process, whether you realize it or not. In our normal environment, gravitational forces move through the body from the foot and ankle, to the knee, the hips, and the trunk. If these forces are too much for the injured soft tissue, they can cause repetitive stress disorders and slow the recovery process. But what if gravity could be reduced or nearly eliminated from this equation?
The AlterG Anti-Gravity Treadmill is essentially the answer to this question. Using technology developed by NASA to allow astronauts to exercise in space, this treadmill was created to help patients recover from their injury or condition more efficiently in an environment in which the amount of gravity can be controlled. The AlterG Anti-Gravity Treadmill can be added to many different physical therapy treatment programs, and at Park Sports Physical Therapy, it has been working wonders in helping many patients to improve more quickly.
Here’s How Limited Gravity can Help Get You Back to Running Faster
Here’s how it works: patients wear a special device on their waist and then step onto the treadmill. When they’re ready, an air chamber is then inflated, and the seal is secured to their waist device with a zipper. Once inflated, the gravity in the air chamber can be adjusted from as low as 20% to 100% of the patient’s normal body weight. This allows them to walk or run with a feeling of weightlessness that many patients say feels like “walking on the moon.”
By offering this ability to patients like distance runners, the AlterG Anti-Gravity Treadmill can be used in a physical therapy treatment program for just about any injury or condition of the lower body, as well as for those who are overweight. Here are just a few of the many diagnoses the treadmill is used for:
Foot fracture
Ankle sprain or tear
Stress fracture
Plantar fasciitis or plantar fascia tear
Knee or hip osteoarthritis
Knee or hip replacement recovery
Case Study – Chronic Knee Pain in a Runner
The AlterG Anti-Gravity Treadmill, cutting edge physical therapy equipment, was utilized early in the rehab process in order to restore normal gait and running mechanics. The patient had excellent carry over from AlterG training and was able to demonstrate normal gait and running mechanics outdoors on level ground at the end of the treatment session. By the end of week 5, the patient was able to achieve normal gait and running mechanics on level ground without warm-up or training on the AlterG. The patient continued to progress running for endurance training on level ground as part of home exercise program.
The patient was able to achieve all her goals and return to full time competitive level cheerleading without symptoms.
Reference: https://www.alterg.com/case-study/chronic-patellofemoral-pain
Numerous other case studies found on the AlterG website, have shown that the AlterG Anti-Gravity Treadmill is effective for treating a number of problems by increasing strength, flexibility and fitness levels. So if you’re dealing with any sort of lower body injury, find out how a physical therapy treatment program with this treadmill can help you next.
If you are looking someone that specializes in the treatment of running injuries, we can help. Our doctors of physical therapy and expert staff not only treat people with running related injuries, we are avid runners, triathletes, and competitors. We know what you are going through…that’s what makes us the logical choice for running injury treatment in Brooklyn.
Running is Your Passion – You’re Part of a Special Group We Can Relate To
Running has grown to become one of the most popular forms of exercise in the country, as more than 40 million Americans claim that they run on a regular basis. If you count yourself as one of the many runners out there, then you’re clearly on to something. As runners are well aware, regular running has been associated with a host of health-related benefits, which include reduced blood pressure, a lower risk for heart disease, better sleeping habits and brain performance, and an improved mood with less stress and anxiety. However, sometimes these health benefits come at a painful price.
Running Injuries are Common
There is only one small problem: running lots of miles frequently puts a great deal of stress on the legs and feet. As a result, runners are at a fairly high risk for getting injured, especially those that run extreme distances like marathoners and long-distance runners.
Approximately 25% of all runners are dealing with some type of injury at any given point in time. Most running-related injuries affect the knees, ankles or feet, and they can either result from a single incident or develop over the course of time. Some of the most common running injuries include shin splints, runner’s knee, Achilles tendinitis, patellar tendinitis, ankle sprains, jumper’s knee and patellar instability. The symptoms of each of these conditions are different, but they all prevent runners from doing what they love in a similar way.
We are the Running Specialists in Brooklyn
There are several ways to hasten the recovery process after an injury and help runners return to their routine as quickly as possible, but the best way to accomplish this is with physical therapy. Our running specialists in one of our four Brooklyn offices have worked with a number of locals…both amateurs and elite athletes. In fact, the owner of Park Sports Physical Therapy was a competitive triathlete himself. Each running rehab program will be different based on the type and seriousness of the injury, but your first visit with us will consist of the following:
A thorough past medical history
A review of your current complaints
A complete physical exam
A dynamic biomechanical analysis of your gait
Footwear evaluation and review
Custom treatment program
A plan to get you back on the road
So if you’re currently dealing with any type of running-related injury or are concerned with your risk for experiencing an injury in the future, we strongly recommend that you schedule some time with one of our doctors of physical therapy as soon as possible. Doing so will get you back to your running routine and help keep your injury risk at a minimal moving forward.
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