Hilton Head, Bluffton & Sun City
Okatie Physical Therapy & Sports Medicine

Our sports rehabilitation & physical therapy services have helped our patients recover from sports injuries and reclaim their lifestyles.

Some of the most common injuries we see and treat include:

• Sprains and muscle strains
• Post-surgical injuries
• Tendon and ligament injuries
• Knee injuries
• Shoulder and elbow injuries
• Foot and ankle injuries
• Back and neck injuries
• Overuse injuries

After a comprehensive evaluation, therapists will develop a sports rehabilitation treatment plan including hands-on care and functional exercises designed to:

• Alleviate your pain
• Correct biomechanical imbalances
• Increase core stability / strength / power
• Improve range of motion
• Include sport-specific exercises and drills
• Build endurance
• Prevent re-injury
• Educate via biofeedback studies for outcome enhancement
• Restore function to pre-injury levels

Not only do we help you heal and hasten your recovery, but we go the extra mile to teach you how to minimize your risk of re-injury. Many sports injuries result from overuse, lack of rest, improper warm-up, or poor conditioning. Our therapists will address these issues with you, show you proper body mechanics and suggest appropriate stretching, strengthening and conditioning exercises for you.

Get the proper sports rehabilitation here at Okatie Physical Therapy and Sports Medicine. Without the proper rehabilitation, a sports injury can lead to long-term chronic pain.

Balance Therapy and Fall Prevention Program

Bad falls are a constant worry for seniors and others who have physical challenges. And those worries aren’t unfounded. Falls are the leading cause of injury-related deaths and serious health problems in the U.S.

Improving your walking skills — technically known as your “gait” — and your balance are interrelated challenges. At Okatie Physical Therapy and Sports Medicine we help you master these skills to decrease your risk of injury, while at the same time increasing your confidence and independence.

What are the benefits of balance and gait training?

Balance and gait are inextricably linked because they tend to impact one another. Even if you don’t think you’re in danger of falling over, that “running out of steam” while walking that you’re attributing to aging muscles could be something else. The problem might actually be slowing reflexes, which make moving around seem more strenuous than it is. By the same token, poor posture and gait can throw off those reflexes.

In fact, the balance and gait systems both rely to some extent on a complex number of body systems that include the inner ear, the eyes, the joint-muscle-nerve system, and of course cognitive functions. Therapy that improves gait and balance works with all of these systems to keep them functioning in harmony.

Gait and balance training has a range of benefits, with avoiding injuries being at the top of the list. Beyond lessening your chances of falling or feeling dizzy, you’re also more likely to feel confident with your footing. In addition, those aches and pains from poor posture are likely to decrease as well.

What does balance and gait training entail?

First, we’ll evaluate your gait to determine potential problems with strength and posture. Simple movements to test balance are also part of the assessment. Together, these basic evaluations point us in the direction of what to focus on in terms of therapy.

Hip and ankle weakness often leads to balance problems, as does poor posture. Strength and flexibility movements can help counteract these problems. These are often as simple as leg lifts while seated in a chair, or “knee marching.” We may also practice standing on one leg, walking heel-to-toe, or tracking the movement of your thumb with your eyes as you move it in various positions.

At Okatie Physical Therapy nd Sports Medicine our therapists realize how important balance and walking is for independent living, as well as for work activities, exercise, sports and enjoying life in general.

That’s why we provide a range of programs and therapies to evaluate and treat balance disorders:

• Assessment and Evaluation Programs
• Difficulty Walking
• Gait Training and Balance Programs
• Fall Prevention and Balance Retraining
• Manual Therapy
• Fitness and Wellness Programs
• Vestibular Rehab
• Functional Training

In cases when dry needling is used by physical therapists, it is typically a technique that can be used as part of a larger treatment plan.

Physical therapists use dry needling with the goal of releasing or inactivating trigger points to relieve pain or improve range of motion. Preliminary research supports that dry needling improves pain control, reduces muscle tension, and normalizes dysfunctions of the motor end plates, the sites at which nerve impulses are transmitted to muscles. This can help speed up the patient’s return to active rehabilitation.