Balance disorders can make your life much more difficult in Caledonia, Michigan. For example, balance issues can make it harder to walk to the kitchen. They can even make it harder to sit up straight while reading or watching your favorite television show. Physical therapists in Caledonia can help treat your balance issues with balance disorder exercises, which are often used because they can help therapists reach these two main goals.
1. Improve muscle strength
For many people, balance disorders are the result of a sports injury. They can also be caused by a work injury or car accident injury that affects the leg muscles. These injuries cause balance issues because the injured muscles are weakened. This is especially likely if you avoid using these muscles at all while they’re healing. The weakening of leg muscles can lead to less stability in your joints and legs, making it harder to maintain your balance. It can even lead to falls that cause more injuries.
Physical therapists can counter these issues by using balance disorder exercises. The reason these exercises are a great option for balance disorders is they help improve muscle strength, which, in turn, can help improve stability in your joints and give you the confidence to use your injured leg normally. As a result, maintaining your balance can be much easier, and you’ll also reduce your risk of falls and the injuries they can cause.
2. Increase flexibility
Many people focus on treating the injured leg when they have balance issues, but another therapy goal balance disorder exercises can help meet is increasing flexibility in the uninjured leg.
When you injure one of your legs, the natural reaction is to take more weight on the uninjured limb. This places additional strain on the muscles of the uninjured leg, and the added strain can cause these muscles to tire faster and tighten up. The tightness can be an issue because it can make your uninjured limb unstable, and this means you’ll be dealing with two shaky limbs. Therapists can counter the tightness by having patients perform balance disorder stretching exercises, which may help restore leg muscle flexibility so that it can remain stable.
Balance disorder exercises are used by Advent Physical Therapy in Caledonia, MI
Among the many techniques we use at Advent Physical Therapy in Caledonia, balance disorder exercises help us meet many goals in treatment programs for balance issues. However, this isn’t the only technique your program may include. Our team will build you a personalized program that draws strength from multiple techniques, such as:
- Manual therapy
- Instrument assisted soft tissue mobilization (IASTM)
- Pelvic floor rehabilitation
- Kinesiology taping
Take the next step to improve your balance. Contact our team today for more information or to schedule an initial appointment.