Is All Manual Therapy Bogus?

There have been a lot of posts out there both for and against manual therapy. We are partly in between, but more on the side of anti-manual therapy. We will be talking about the conventional version of manual therapy and what it does. In addition, we will also touch on why we don’t necessarily support it.

Our Positioning

When a physical therapist, massage therapist or chiropractor tends to their therapy, they are getting physiological effects. But they are considered detrimental to injury recovery and prevention. The manual techniques are causing damage to the tissue in order to cover up symptoms or increase range of motion/ decrease muscle spasms. The overwhelming majority of manual therapy does not attack the root cause of symptoms. This is why people have to keep going back to them. If anything it’s making them worse.

The Science Behind it

Manipulation is designed to “put the bones back in place.” We would say that’s bogus. If you look at the decades worth of research that’s been done on that, we already know that it does not work. Another form of manual therapy is mobilization. It might increase the acute joint range of motions. We do use mobilizations to get into an acute range of motion, but then we attack the root cause after that. Other forms: stretching, massage and Graston– decrease pain in some situations. But the question is: at the physiological base, what is going on to increase the range of motion? Probably decreasing neuromuscular function, which doesn’t make this bogus, but definitely contradictive.

Our Version of Manual Therapy

If we look at what we do here at One80 Physical Therapy® with manual therapy, it’s the opposite of these processes are trying to do. What we are trying to do is increase neuromuscular facilitation with the use of our hands. Anytime you put your hands on someone its manual therapy. So that’s why throwing everything into the manual therapy bucket and saying its bogus is something that we do not support. When a patient comes back to see us, we expect them to be better than they were when they left us. That’s why we see patients for a minimal amount of time and they get fast lasting results.

If you think One80 Physical Therapy® might be a good fit for you or you want more information, visit our sign up page. If you are experiencing pain and would like to learn how One80 Physical Therapy® can help you get back in the game of life, call (970) 593-9300 today for a FREE CONSULTATION. Let us show you why the One80 System is the opposite of everything you’ve tried before.