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Streamline to Sport

AN ATHLETIC TRAINING SERVICE

Article by Elizabeth McKinney MS, LAT, ATC

Photography by Blair Bloomfield

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What is Streamline to Sport?

Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Center (OSMC) provides services for Manhattan and the surrounding communities for all your orthopaedic needs. We offer both consultations with our Physicians and Physical Therapists. OSMC Physical Therapy is composed of a sports medicine team of physical therapists, physical therapy assistants, and an athletic trainer that sees you from your initial injury all the way through your last stage of rehab.

Our physical therapy team is excited to offer a new service, Streamline to Sport. This is an athletic training service that provides biomechanical and functional movement assessments, injury prevention strategies, and sport-specific rehabilitation designed to ensure you make a full return to your sport. 

Streamline to Sport offers the patient the ability to receive services through movement assessments, proper exercise mechanics instruction, and sport-specific activity progressions. It provides our patients a guided way back from physical therapy discharge to full return to play, all while preparing the athlete both physically and mentally. Our athletic trainer takes the fundamental movements and skills that are established in PT and progresses them to complex skills that your sport or activity demands. The progressions used not only help the patient get exposed to higher levels of skills that prepare them for full return to play, but also restore and build confidence and the mental assurance that they are ready for all activities. Our team creates customized and focused plans of care that concentrate on the injury or area of concern, are age-appropriate, and designed specifically for the necessary sport or activity. 

An example of how a patient would utilize this service can be modeled through a patient who has sustained an ACL injury, gone through surgery, and is now approaching physical therapy discharge. Physical therapy discharge means that this patient has met goals that the physical therapist has set, such as: 

  • Restoring Mobility and/or Joint ROM 
  • Achieving Normal Posture and Gait
  • Achieving Local Strength (i.e. quadricep strength) 
  • Achieving Foundational, Functional Movement Strength (i.e. able to complete weighted squats, completing agility ladder patterns, establishing jumping and landing techniques) 

Streamline to Sport, then takes this solid foundation to build upon and progresses through exercises to restore strength, and adds sport-specific movements with progressions of movement patterns to game speed. This can include: 

  • Improving Functional Strength with Speed (i.e. completing agility ladder patterns at increased intensities) 
  • Improving Functional Strength with Speed in Multiple Planes (i.e cutting and change of direction activities)
  • Improving Ability to Change Speed (i.e. working on the reaction time and randomization of your sport)
  • Improving Sport Specific Functional Capacity (i.e your sport-specific skill of batting, throwing, kicking, etc) 
  • Restoring and Building Confidence and Mental Assurance in Oneself and Abilities and Skills

OSMC Physical Therapy is excited to be able to serve Manhattan and the surrounding communities with this new service. At our new East side Physical Therapy location, we are able to offer patients a large gym space that has a basketball, volleyball, and tennis court, as well as a netting system where patients can complete batting, kicking, and throwing progressions. All of our equipment facilitates our providers to expose the patients to game-like situations and scenarios, preparing them for the demands of their sport or activity and allowing them to reach their full potential. For more information or to schedule a consultation, visit our website, kansasortho.com/streamline-to-sport-program, or call us at 785-564-4699 and ask for Elizabeth McKinney.

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