Why don’t you have a lot of exercise machines in your clinics?
Over the course of many years, we have acquired our own style of physical therapy. We like to work directly with our patients. We feel that in many facilities, therapists can utilize machines as sort of an assembly line for patients, where they go from station to station without any specific guidance. In my opinion, this does not give the opportunity for the physical therapist to watch and listen the patient. Additionally, many of the exercises that we prescribe during a session can be duplicated at home, so the advice is practical and will likely be used as part of a home maintenance program. Many patients do not have access to a gym and therefore can not reproduce machine based activities outside the office. We also feel that machines can be too specific and limit our ability to work on multiple body systems. We feel that when the patient is ready to progress to gym activity, then they can likely be discharged to a gym. For those of you who prefer machines, yes we do have some and we do use them. However I am quite confident that any of our patients will tell you that they get a significant workout under the direction of our therapists, more than they could get from a line of machines, using our style of treatment. We feel that the more opportunity that a physical therapist has to work directly on and directly supervise a patient, the more likely that patient is to get better.