Physical Therapy: What is The Goal?

Hi everyone, its Erienne with Peak Endurance. I want to talk to you guys today about physical therapy goals. If you’ve ever been to physical therapy before you know that in your first session, you will talk with your therapist about goals. What is your goal for physical therapy?

Well, the number one thing: your goal for PT has to be important to you. It’s the reason you came in. You don’t come to physical therapy, if everything is perfect and functioning optimally. You come to physical therapy, because you want something to improve.

So whether that’s doing a pain free activity or sport. Or getting through your work day pain free. Or maybe it’s not about pain; it’s about performance. Whatever you choose has to be important to you. Because physical therapy is hard. It takes dedication and often patience. If your goal is not that important to you, it’s going to make that dedication and patience, more difficult.

Next is the second thing to know about goals. Once you have your goal, everything you do in a session and at home should come back to that goal. Every exercise you do in clinic should get you one step closer to that goal. If something that you’re doing doesn’t seem like it’s applying to your goal, or you want to know how an exercise/treatment applies to reaching your goal that’s a great question to ask your PT.

And they’ll be able to tell you!  Because once you connect that meaning / reason why you’re doing an exercise to your overall goal, you’ll be more likely to do it.

So again, number one, get that really clear, meaningful goal. Number two, make sure that you’re on the same page about how each exercise or task goes back to your goal. And how it complements your goal. And how it builds up to  your goal. If you and your physical therapists can do those two things you are going to have a more meaningful and likely more effective physical therapy experience