May The FORCE Be With You
I’m not talking about Star Wars here – but FORCE PLATES.
What are they?
Why should they matter for rehab?
Why have you never used them before?
Those are the questions I am going to answer below
Introducing A Huge Advantage
Force Plates are portable tools that measure the Ground Reaction Force exerted by an individual during activities such as jumping, squatting, balance, hopping, push ups, etc. There is a lot of scientific mumbo jumbo I can go through, but you don’t want to hear that. What’s important is that force plates are measuring significant periods of time during the duration of each activity and it tells your provider A TON about how you are moving. It’s one thing to watch someone perform a jump squat. It’s another thing to discover which phase of the jump (eccentric, concentric, landing, take-off) is limiting you or contributing to your issue.
Why You Should Care
For the last decade or more, Force Plates were only really available to elite professional sports teams or programs. Your favorite athlete has and continues to use them. All the rehab and sports performance teams across the world utilize force plates to tell them where their athletes are at in their recovery or performance process.
If they are important enough for the NFL, NBA, MLB, EPL, NHL and more – you should take every advantage to use them yourself.
There is so much data available now that you can do a single leg jump on my force plates and I can tell you where you are performance wise compared to every other individual that has ever been tested with VALD products – which is the most comprehensive data set in the world.
One of the most significant benefits in my practice for using Force Plates is to see the symmetry between both limbs. This is what every therapist ultimately wants to know. Is the injured limb truly symmetrical with the non-injured? Force Plates are one of the absolute best tools to figure this out.
Why You’ve Never Used Them Before
Technology is always advancing – you can use AI to see if I really wrote this. I did :).
However, physical therapy often times gets stuck when it comes to it’s utilization of new tools. Especially if that requires investing money. Even more so when it requires going through a huge chain of operations to make a purchase happen.
Force Plates are still new to the physical therapy world and we are still figuring out how to use them. Vertical Sports PT has been using them for a year now and do so with just about EVERY SINGLE patient we have.
I would not be surprised if Vertical Sports Physical Therapy is the ONLY Mobile PT business in the Greater Seattle area that brings them to your home. Just another way that we are offering you the best that PT has to offer, in the comfort of your own home.
If you want to get the most thorough Evaluation around town, click the link below to inquire.