What to Expect

Our Manual Physical Therapy Treatment Model

What most people think of when they hear the term “Physical Therapy” is very far from what you experience at Total Potential. You do not enter a gym-type setting with a lot of exercise machines and modalities like e-stim and ultrasound units. You enter a peaceful, inviting space with a few key components: our treatment tables, our diagnostic skills, and our hands.

All of our patients are viewed and evaluated in a holistic way. Every part of the body is connected with all other areas, and you may be surprised by the implications of this when looking for the true underlying cause of your pain.

Though the causes of a person’s pain are often in the same part of the body it is experienced, quite often, they lie elsewhere in the body.

For example, it is not uncommon to find the true source of a patient’s back pain in an ankle, knee, or hip that is not moving correctly. A previous injury or surgery may have left the area weak or less mobile, and the change in movement resulted in injury-causing compensations elsewhere.

As all the contributing factors are discovered, Functional Manual Therapy® (FMT) is used to resolve the dysfunctions found. Every joint and point in the body has an axis of motion, so the techniques focus on restoring this aspect of human efficiency.

Mechanical structures such as bones, joints, connective tissue, peripheral nerves, and central nervous system structures negatively affect the human efficiency of “on-axis” motion.

Luckily, these structures can be manipulated back to their efficient state quite effectively.

Manipulation of the cranial bones, coccyx, dural-neural system, and even the abdominal viscera (organs) may also be used to restore efficient, pain-free movement and function.

Though collecting all relevant information may take some time, we feel that you should receive as much treatment as possible on the first visit.

For this reason, treatment is generally mixed in with the evaluation so that you experience the effects of hands-on treatment in your first session.

Though movement and exercise are vital in all our patients’ plans of care, we do not agree with having patients pay to perform exercises in the clinic when they can be done as part of a home exercise program. Therefore, when exercises or stretches are needed, we give thorough instruction on how to perform them so you can do them on your own time. Our home programs often also include self-treatment techniques so you can continue mobilizing your tissues and joints between appointments.

At Total Potential, time is spent only on the components of treatment and rehabilitation that you could not reproduce on your own.

Our goal with every patient is to quickly identify the true causes of your symptoms, and then apply highly effective Manual Therapy techniques to resolve your pain and get you back to doing the activities you want as soon as possible… without pain and limitations.

With the hands-on techniques we use and the fact that each treatment is one-on-one care every time, the time it takes to resolve pain and injury is usually far less than at other clinics. If our approach to treatment sounds like a good fit for you, inquire about availability or apply for a free consultation with one of our Doctors of Physical Therapy.