CompletePT - Pool and Land Therapy

CompletePT combines what is best about pool and land physical therapy under one roof. Our attentive staff is committed to providing patients with the highest quality care, treating them with kindness and respect from the first appointment until full recovery. In a luxurious setting, our patients begin their rehabilitation in the 92-degree, heated pool where they can perform movements possible only in the buoyancy of water.

Next, patients are transitioned to our state-of-the-art, 10,000 square foot gym where they do exercises that must occur on land against gravity in order to regain function in their activities of daily living.

After injury or surgery, patients are able to re-learn skills of daily life in a non-gravitational setting in the pool, then translate those skills aback to land where gravity is reintroduced. By having our patients move back and forth from pool to land, pool to land, we watch our patients achieve incredible results in improved function and accelerated recovery. Since our pool and land therapy programs are administered by the same physical therapists, there is unity of purpose and vision.

What is Pool Therapy
What types of conditions are helped by pool therapy?
What if I just had or am planning a surgery?
Surgery Prevention
How can I begin a pool therapy program?
Pre-op and Post-op Rehab
Back Rehab
In-pool cervical and lumber traction
Work injury rehab
Balance training
Traditional land physical therapy
Locations

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The Staff of Complete PT

What is Pool Therapy?
Pool or aquatic therapy is the safest form of rehab, especially for weight-bearing injuries, because it takes place in the buoyancy of water and thereby removes impact and trauma from weight-bearing joints. In pool therapy, the water offers buoyant support for the body, resistance to bodily movement, a natural reduction in pain, and a relaxing and refreshing feel. Combined with traditional land therapy, it offers the quickest way to return to normal daily activities.

CompletePT’s pool program offers a three-prong approach to solving rehabilitation challenges:

We provide specific rehab exercises designed to help heal the injury.
We include a safe, progressive total body fitness program that helps guide the entire body toward fitness even as the injury heals.
We offer guidance in the correction of faulty biomechanics that may have contributed to the injury.

While wearing a flotation belt in deep water, patients feel no weight-bearing at all as they strengthen their bodies. In shoulder-deep water, patients weigh only ten percent of their normal body weights, so every exercise is exceptionally low impact. By starting movement in water early in a rehabilitation program, the damage that occurs after an injury – stiffening, loss of circulation, loss of muscles size, and a growing involvement of other body parts surrounding the injury – can be prevented.

Former NFP player David Kopay rehabs his knee.

Lynda Huey, founder of CompletePT , spent more than two decades water training many of the world’s finest athletes, and she brings her techniques and theories to our program. Thus, we apply the basic principle of sports medicine in all our care: help patients regain full function of the injured area while preserving or gaining as much fitness as possible as the injury heals.

Types of conditions helped by pool therapy

Professional football players cross-train with Lynda Huey in Fremantle, Australia

Virtually all injuries and rheumatological conditions, including osteo arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, ankle and leg sprains and fractures, presurgical and postsurgical hips, knees, and backs, muscle strains, frozen shoulders, painful necks and backs, fibromyalgia, achilles and patellar tendinitis.

Planning or recovering from a surgery

Pool therapy fits perfectly into the well-designed postsurgical therapy program, because water provides the safest place for protected, gradual, and guided motion that does not overly stress the joint or site of repair. Patients can start pool therapy very early in the postoperative recovery phase, often before land-based therapy programs would be possible. Over the years, we’ve seen patients who use our pool program as "prehab" (therapy prior to surgery) return to full function much more quickly than those who have been inactive prior to surgery. By gaining strength and flexibility prior to surgery, they returned to the pool already knowing how to do the exercises and they quickly regained function and range of motion.

Surgery Prevention
Our pool program has been effective in helping many patients prevent hip, knee, and back surgeries. By regaining their mobility, strength, flexibility and function, and by reducing their pain, patients often can "buy time," – give themselves years before inevitable surgeries are eventually required. Some never have surgeries; others delay them. If surgery is required, what had started as a prevention program transitioned automatically into a prehab program.

Begining a physical therapy program
If you wish to bill your health insurance, verify with your carrier that your policy covers physical therapy. Then print out our prescription form and ask your M.D. to sign it.

(Note: form is a PDF file, and requires Adobe Acrobat Reader. Click here to get Acrobat free.)

Next, call our office at 310-845-9690 to schedule an evaluation with one of our physical therapists and then your first pool visit. If you’ll be flying in from another area, please schedule at least two weeks in advance.

If you aren’t going to bill insurance, ask the receptionist for our current cash prices.

Pre-op and Post-op Rehab
Gain strength and flexibility prior to surgery, then return to the pool to regain full function and range of motion. Weightlessness in water allows for safe, early movement of surgical sites to speed healing.

Back Rehab
Back pain sufferers – whether they have had surgery, are planning a surgery, or want to prevent surgery – find success in the pool. Patients experiencing acute episodes of back pain are not able to perform most land-based exercises; but when they enter the gravity-reduced environment of water, their pain is reduced and they can begin gentle movements to improve their strength, flexibility, and endurance. Our back stabilization program starts patients in chest-deep water where they begin walking while learning to use abdominal muscles to create a "muscular corset," thereby protecting their backs. They move quickly to a more vigorous deep-water program, then finish with a full regimen of rebounding, shallow-water exercises to improve their ability to withstand impact without harming their backs. These more difficult exercsies prepare them for the land therapy to come.

In order to help our patients make the transition from pool to land safely, we ask the same therapists who treat them in the pool to supervise their land therapy. This continuity of care provides our patients their best possible chance for regaining full strength, mobility, and function without re-injury. Our luxurious 10,000-square-foot gym houses all the latest equipment, and our attentive staff carefully guides patients toward improvements in all of their sports, fitness routines, and activities of daily living.

In-pool cervical and lumbar traction
Developed by hydrotherapy pioneer Dr. Leroy Perry, Jr., this innovative, soothing form of "floating traction" can act as a miracle, immediately reducing patients’ pain.

Work injury rehab
Patients simulate their normal work duties in the non-gravitation environment of water much sooner than they could on land and therefore safely regain function and can return more quickly to work.

People with work-related injuries can often begin pool therapy sooner than they can on land. Once their pain has been reduced and gentle versions of their normal movement patterns regained, these patients are transitioned into land therapy to simulate their work duties – something that is often not possible to do in the water. We instruct our patients in appropriate, job-specific, biomechanics and educate them in correct ways of lifting and moving on the job so they can reduce their risk of re-injury after returning to work.

Balance training

Patients with complaints of unsteadiness, others who have fallen due to poor balance, begin in the pool – a safe place to start balance training. The water supports and protects our patients from falls as they work on balance exercises such as slow marching, step/curbs, and single-leg standing. As strength and confidence improve, patients move to the gym to complete the balance training/safety program in a more life-like environment.

Traditional land physical therapy

Our land physical therapy is performed in a luxurious 10,000-square-foot gym with all the latest strength and cardiovascular training equipment. Our professional, friendly staff is knowledgeable in sport, orthopedic, and neurological rehabilitation and helps every patient through his or her recovery process. Components of our land therapy program include truck stabilization, abdominal strengthening, upper/lower body strengthening, flexibility training, posture re-education, cardiovascular training, lifting techniques, and biomechanics.

When most of our patients come into the gym, they’ve already been in our pool program at least two weeks. Exercising in water early in their rehab programs lets them begin land physical therapy stronger, more flexible, and with less pain than if they had begun an exclusively land-based therapy program at the beginning of their recovery. This unique combination of pool and land physical therapy enables our patients to regain function and return to their normal lives more quickly. When they leave CompletePT they have improved levels of fitness compared to their pre-injury state.

Our combined therapy focuses on lumbar stabilization and total body fitness, which not only improves function but reduces the risk of re-injury.

Click here to view CompletePT's Health Information Privacy Notice.
This notice describes how medical information about you may be used and disclosed and how you can access this information. Please review it carefully.