October is National Physical Therapy Month and this year's campaign slogan that is being promoted through the American Physical Therapy Association is "Move Forward."  As a profession, Physical Therapists are challenged on a daily basis to improve our patients'  motion or movement.  It doesn't matter what age, ability, or diagnosis; one of our major goals is to get our patients moving and do our best to help keep them moving.  Movement requires strength of the muscle to move the joint; coordination, which is the ability of muscle tissue to control motion direction, speed, and depth of motion; endurance, which is the ability to consistently perform repetitive movement patterns or tasks successfully, and joint or soft tissues to allow for motion.  Movement that is performed by the therapist to the patient to assist them with recovery of normal physiological motion is called mobilization.  This can be further broken down into soft tissue mobilization or passive stretching of the muscle or soft tissue structures, or joint mobilization, which are skilled techniques utilized by Physical Therapists to improve anatomic range of motion through joint structures in the body including the spine, shoulders, hips, and knees.

Therefore, get up and get moving and then remember to move on down to our annual Open House at Alliance Physical Therapy on Oct 21st.

Yours in health,

Matt