What are strengthening exercises?
Strengthening exercises are activities that make your muscles work harder than normal. After you work your muscles, your body naturally repairs them and forms new muscle proteins. Building muscle gives your body more power and endurance.
Strengthening is an important component of physical therapy, rehabilitation and everyday health. When you’re overcoming — or preventing — an injury, you must develop strength to help stabilize the affected area.
Why do I need to do strengthening in physical therapy?
Strengthening is important for everyone, whether they’re seeing a physical therapist or not. You should incorporate strengthening into your regular exercise routine, working your major muscle groups at least twice or three days a week.
In physical therapy, strengthening exercises play an important role in getting you back to better health and everyday activities. Weak muscles can cause further injury to the surrounding joints, ligaments and soft tissue. A strengthening program benefits your health in a variety of ways:
- Relieving pain and stiffness of arthritis
- Correcting problems with posture[1] , body mechanics or movement
- Rehabilitating after an injury, accident or surgery
- Preventing injury
- Limiting muscle atrophy after surgery or periods of immobility
- Improving recovery before undergoing surgery
- Overcoming a loss of function or functional strength
- Making daily activities easy, safe and comfortable
What should I expect from a muscle strengthening program?
Your physical therapist will develop a treatment plan specifically for your injury, condition or overall health. That will include a mix of strengthening exercises as well as a variety of other stretching and therapeutic exercises. Each exercise is picked to target the specific muscle (or muscle group), joint or tissue contributing to your condition — plus, surrounding areas that were affected. The exercises are functional so that they improve your strength in a way that you’ll use every day.
Your individualized strengthening program will include various exercises and get progressively more difficult as you build strength and muscle over the course of treatment. There are many different types of strengthening exercises that could be in your program:
- Resistance band training
- Bodyweight exercises
- Exercising against gravity
- Lifting weights, dumbbells, medicine balls or other exercise equipment
Muscle strengthening at your local physical therapy clinic isn’t like going to the gym. While there are weights, bands and machines, many everyday objects find their way into your strengthening routine. This helps you continue your treatment and improvement at home. And, with guidance on proper form and movement from a PT, you can safely perform these exercises on your own with less risk of re-injury. Your program may vary, but you can expect to visit your physical therapist multiple times a week (at least initially) and perform similar functional strength exercises on the off days.
What results will I see after doing strengthening exercises?
You will get stronger — but not in the obvious physical nature that comes to mind when you think of stronger muscles. Strengthening with a physical therapist is not about bulking up. It’s about improving areas of weakness and building enough strength to return to your regular activities without issue.
A strengthening program with your physical therapist also provides a foundation for you to continue building strength on your own to meet your personal health and wellness goals.