Weight Lifting as Physical Therapy

Do your know were many peoples first introduction to weightlifting is? It is not in a gym, it is in a Physical Therapy room. In fact if I walked you in blindfolded to either a modern gym, or modern PT department of most major hospitals or orthopedic centers, I bet you would be hard pressed to tell them apart. Weightlifting is almost always part of the physical therapy to recuperate from an injury or slow the effect of joint disease such as arthritis.

There is a common misconception that people with an injured back, or hip, or knee pain due to arthritis, bursitis or other degenerative joint disease, should not weightlift because it will only make the matter worse. Not true. Weightlifting is not only an accepted practice in physical therapy, but a recent study published in several medical journals proved the benefits of weightlifting and strength training to patients with knee arthritis. For many people with chronic hip and knee pain a regimen of exercise and physical therapy that included weightlifting prevented the need for joint replacement surgery.

Weightlifting, like all strength training is a type of Progressive Resistance Exercise. The physiological definition of Progressive Resistance is a method of increasing a muscles ability to operate against force. In lay terms that means it is the way we get stronger. The main reason that someone is undergoing treatment by a Physical Therapist is that a muscle or joint due to disease involvement, injury, or genetic defect cannot generate enough force to engage in everyday activity.

The goals therefore of the Physical Therapist and the Weightlifter are the same, to strengthen muscles. There are several major disciplines of Physical Therapy including musculoskeletal, neuromuscular, and gerontology. That’s Muscles and Bones, Nerves and Anti-aging. There were some interesting results in a recent survey published by the National Library of Medicine and The National Institutes of Heath.

The survey was designed to determine the effectiveness of progressive resistance exercise as a part of physical therapy. And it was found that across disease conditions and injuries weight training and Progressive Resistance Exercise made a major difference in a patient’s ability to generate force with the affected joint or muscle being treated. Furthermore it was determined that these improvements carried over into everyday life.

However one of the other conclusions of that same study was that with many of the injuries, the initial benefits gained by weightlifting as part of physical therapy, dissipated after the therapy was completed. So what does this tell us? Not that we wish pain or injury on anyone, but PT can be a first introduction to the benefits of weightlifting and strength training, and that anyone who has had PT should be encouraged to carry on with progressive resistance exercises like weightlifting throughout their lives.

This will not only maintain the improvements gained from the physical therapy, but can get you into a practice that has been proven to have a positive effect on overall health and fitness, and could very well help to prevent a repeat of the very injury that put you in PT in the first place.