If You Are Living With Lower Back Pain, Have You Tried To Properly Rehabilitate Your Back So You Can Finally Move & Enjoy Life Without Pain? Let Our Back Pain Specialist, Licensed Physical Therapists Help You Feel Good Again!
More than 80% of people will experience lower back pain at some point in their life. And, for about 20-28% of these people the pain becomes chronic low back pain. Physical Therapy can help you get your life back!
If you are living with lower back pain that causes muscle spasms, pain to sit, difficulty bending over and causes you to be hesitant to exercise or make certain movements, like lifting your kids, did you know that there is strong evidence that physical therapy can help you? At Purple Mountain PT we specialize in treating acute and chronic back pain and helping people achieve durable results and the confidence to live their life pain-free.
Because our PTs specialize in helping people who are living with low back pain, neck pain, pelvic pain, hip pain and jaw pain, we are uniquely qualified to help you resolve your lower back pain. Working closely with each patient, we carefully develop a customized treatment program, based in our holistic, whole-body approach to best address the many causes of your back pain.
Why does your back hurt? That is the question that our PTs aim to solve. Our holistic approach seeks to identify the root causes to your back pain and to develop a treatment plan to improve these. Once we know the contributions, then we provide personalized manual therapies, corrective exercises, pain neuroscience education, rehabilitative ultrasound imaging and self-care recommendations as part of our comprehensive back pain treatment.
You may think your low back pain is because of a herniated disc, but why is your disc herniated? We look deeper as to the reasons that discs herniate and work together with you to promote healing of your disc and resolution of the excess strain & pressure on your discs and nerves so you can resolve your back pain. To learn more about working with our PTs to help your herniated disc, radiculopathy and back pain, reach out to us here.
Often patients tell us that their back pain is because they get muscle spasms, tightness and stiffness. Definitely, many of our patients experience muscle tension, spasm and pain. However, our PTs want to figure out why are you having muscle spasms and develop treatment to help these to cease. Research on back pain, for example, identifies that the deep core muscles that attach to your low back bones (your lumbar spine) typically are inhibited when someone has pain and other muscles have to compensate. It is usually these muscles that go into spasm. So, our PTs work closely with you, providing manual therapies and therapeutic exercises, to retrain the right muscles to work, to ease joint stiffness & better align your entire spine & pelvis and to calm down the muscles that are overworking and spasming. If this sounds like your back pain, rest assured that we can help you. We have knowledgable team members who can talk to you and help you learn more about our unique & specialized approach to alleviating back pain; you can reach out to us here.
At Purple Mountain PT, we employ a unique approach providing PTs who specialize in helping people who are living with low back pain. There is a difference when you work with a specialist PT. Our physical therapy Clinical Practice Guidelines for treating Acute and Chronic Low Back Pain are the result of analysis of extensive research results to determine what are the important components of a physical therapy treatment plan to help you resolve your chronic or acute low back pain.
Our PTs have extensive post-graduate training and experience helping resolve back pain. Every appointment you have with your PT is private, for 55 minutes. We never leave your side and tell you to do some exercises by yourself. That is fruitless.
If you are living with lower back pain, your physical therapy treatments will be customized to your needs and goals and include a combination of manual therapies, movement education, deep core training, joint mobilization, nerve calming, postural correction, rehabilitative ultrasound imaging of your back, pelvic floor and abdominals and anything else you may need to help resolve your back pain.
If you are living with lower back pain, does any of this sound familiar?
Are you having lower back pain that causes you to be hesitant to exercise or make certain movements, like lifting your kids?
Does the thought of doing your Spring yardwork clean up also come with knowing your back is going to hurt?
Do you hesitate to lift groceries, fill your dishwasher or bend over to pick something up?
Are you uncetain about what exercises you should be doing?
Do you wonder if rest might be better for your back and then you also wonder if maybe rest is not helping and you should be moving instead?
At Purple Mountain PT, we take the fear and guesswork out of how to get your back feeling good again. Our PTs specialize in reducing back pain, including muscle spasms, herniated discs, sciatica, stiffness, SI joint pain, pelvic pain, hip pain, thoracic stiffness and postural issues & movement patterns that worsen back pain. If you are interested in learning more about what our PTs offer that is different from what you have tried, call us at (616) 516-4334 to talk with one of our knowledgable team members or ask us a question here and we will be in touch.
Are you afraid to move, because of your back pain? You are not alone! Studies have looked into what are the things that make someone who has back pain afraid to move?
The identified barriers to moving, when you have back pain are:
Fear of movement
Uncertainty about what ype of movement to do or what type of intervention would help
Lack of information about how to help your back pain
Lack of motivation to move
Lack of support, including the needed support from educated medical providers, such as our back pain specialist PTs. Our PTs are here to support you! We’ve got your back! Literally!
So if you are living with lower back pain, what items can help you improve your movement? This has been studied and the following are key to getting you moving again:
Adequate information about what will help your pain and how to do the movements and exercises correctly. Also information about what to avoid
Professional support from people like our specialist physical therapists
Social support from your network of family and friends
Perceived benefits of movement and physical activity. This requires education and proving to yourself, through the guidance of our PTs, that the right, controlled movements will help you.
Favorable conditions so you can engage in the physical activity. This is why our PTs teach you progressive exercises and give you detailed recommendations and practice of exercises you can do should you have a back pain flare up and exercise you can do when your back is doing well.
Back pain can affect anyone of any age, maybe from a bad accident or sitting for long periods of time. Many people are unaware that there are ways to prevent lower back pain as you age but sometimes it is inevitable when it comes to traumatic injuries. This is where Purple Mountain PT comes in. While it is never too late to start working with a PT for your back pain, starting PT sooner can get you out of pain sooner and give you the tools to live your life without lower back pain. Our PTs have a goal of getting your back strong and mobile, so you don’t have low back pain in your future. For more information on how we can help you prevent or treat your back pain, call us at 616-516-4334 to connect with us!
Low back pain, stiffness, tightness and muscle spasm are common. Did you know that to resolve back pain, it is best to correct the many underlying contributions to your pain, including your deep core muscle strength and coordination, joint stiffness, fascia restrictions, muscle spasm and spine and pelvic misalignment and stiffness?
An achy and tight lower back is a symptom of many things that are not working ideally in or around your low back. If a nerve is irritated, such as the sciatic or femoral nerve, the pain progresses and can extend into your legs. You may feel sharp pain in your hamstring or quads, or perhaps an ache in your glutes and trouble with simple movements like bending over to load the dishwasher. If you are dealing with this, you are not alone, our licensed physical therapists can help you. Back pain is one of the most common reasons why people come to see us. We are physical therapists who specialize in treating pelvic health problems, back pain, neck pain and TMJ disorders. Book your first evaluation today by calling 616-516-4334.
Did you know that Exercise, specific types of exercise, have Level A Evidence to help Acute and Lower Back Pain?
The clinical practice guidelines specifically identify the following types of exercises, which our PTs teach you to do, as necessary to include in a comprehensive rehabilitation treatment plan to help lower back pain.
Progressive Endurance Exercise and Fitness Activities to Promote Muscle Strengthening and Endurance: Progressive exercises begin with building the foundation of your spine health and core stability. Our PTs begin with low intensity, very detailed and guided completion of exercises for specific trunk muscle activation. Our goal is to reduce pain and improve your joints moving, core muscle firing, reduce muscle space, improve movement patterns and get your brain understanding how and where the right muscles are to help you.
Trunk coordination, strengthening and endurance exercises. These should also address specific trunk muscle activation: Using our rehabilitative ultrasound imaging you are able to see your back muscles, abdominal muscles and pelvic floor muscles (these are your deep core muscles that give your back strength and stability) working while you exercise! This real-time ultrasound is incredibly helpful to teach our patients how to use the right muscles. So often, when you are living with lower back pain, the wrong muscles overwork, then they go into spasm and then you get atrophy and impairment of the correct core muscles. Our PTs help you bring back you core strength. Patients love this!
Training Movement & BalanceControl: Evidence finds that, under the watchful guidance of a back pain specialist PT, training specific movement control and balance exercises alleviates lower back pain more than simply stretching.
Repeated movements, exercises and procedures to promote reduction in symptoms, specific to each person’s specific findings, lower extremity pain and referred pain pattern. Our PTs love the detective work of figuring out how to get your spine joints aligned, gliding and sliding well and reducing any pinching on nerves, movement patterns problems and pinched nerves. We will find, with you, the right moves that work for your back. Each person is different and this is why the watchful eye of our specialist PT gives you the right support, education and exercises to help you get out of back pain.
Aerobic Exercise, Aquatic Exercise and General Exercise: Evidence supports that these exercises can reduce your low back pain. This is why our PTs will encourage you to get moving. We help determine what aerobic exercise may be appropriate at each stage of your rehabilitation.
Recovering balance, strength, pelvic floor and core coordination
If you are living with back pain, you have found the right place. Our back pain specialist PTs have devoted our careers to helping patients properly complete these exercises. We understand your back muscles, joints, nerves and discs are not cooperative with trying to exercise. This is why you need the skilled help of our PTs, to coordinate and turn-on the right muscles, to move effectively and to reduce the spasms and compensations coming from the wrong muscles. Patients love the attentive instruction from our PTs and feel the difference of their core muscles finally working or their hips moving or their spine bending with ease. If you are looking for guidance and relief of pain that we provide, reach out to (616) 516-4334 to see if you qualify to work with our PTs or simply ask us a question here and we will be in touch.
Because our PTs specialize in treating acute and chronic back pain, neck pain, pelvic floor dysfunction and TMJ disorders, you are assured to be getting the skilled and effective guidance from a PT who knows how to help you. We are here to break through the barrier of persistent back pain using our holistic approach that discovers the root causes of your back pain and comprehensively addresses these using manual therapies, guided progressive exercise, movement pattern training and rehabilitative ultrasound imaging.
If you have lower back pain, in addition to specific Exercises, Manual Therapy has been included in the Clinical Practice Guidelines for PT to help your back pain.
Our PTs employ a variety of hands-on manual therapies to help alleviate your back pain. In particular manual therapy has been found to reduce pain and disability for low back pain. It also helps relieve pain that you may experience in your buttock or thigh. Manual therapies can help improve spine and hip mobility, as well. In addition to providing our patients gentle & therapeutic joint mobilization for their spine, we also include manual therapies to address nerve mobilization to reduce low back pain and radiating pain down the legs.
Our spine specialist PTs treat back pain by providing whole body care that includes manual therapy and exercise
Compared to exercise alone, a randomized control trial of 220 patients who had low back pain found that the group of people who receive manual therapies that mobilized the spine plus exercise, had greater improvement in disability after 4 weeks and 3 months of treatment.
While there are many different treatment options available for lower back pain, most of these only offer temporary relief because they fail to provide both the manual therapies and the corrective exercises, movement pattern training, core strengthening and balance exercises. Our PTs provide all of these, in private, one-on-one appointments so our patients who are living with lower back pain experience immediate and long-term pain relief.
Tempory pain relief at home may come from using things like a heating pad or ice to ease up the tight muscles and inflammation. Many of our patients come to us taking ibuprofen regularly and are looking to stop these over-the-counter medications. Other medical interventions are invasive, such as spinal injections; these come with side effects and are not recommended in the clinical guidelines for how our PTs treat lower back pain.
When you are having back pain, we know you need relief and understand how debilitating the pain you experience can be. Our PTs provide treatment that allows you to feel better for today and also targets the actual cause of your pain to provide you a long-term solution to your problem. Our approach is much different compared to short term solutions! We will help you understand the underlying issues and actually help you find ways to feel relief! If you relate to this and are tired of short-term solutions to your back pain, give us a call to learn more on how we can help by calling 616-516-4334.
What to Expect When Coming to Purple Mountain Physical Therapy for Low Back Pain:
Here at Purple Mountain PT, identifying and therapeutically treating the numerous things that are contributing to your lower back pain is our speciality. Our approach is different and many of our patients have told us that seeing us is the first time they have finally gotten rid of their pain.
You will receive one-on-one treatments, 55 minutes in length with your licensed physical therapist. You have the undivided attention of your PT, we never treat another patient while we are working with you and we never leave your side.
Our PTs use a holisitic approach and systematic method to take a deep dive into your issues and address problem areas in depth.
We use hands-on manual therapies such as myofascial release, joint mobilization, nerve glides, pelvic and spine alignment and trigger point release. These are meant to alleviate muscle spasm, joint stiffness, fascial restrictions and irritated nerves
Therapeutic exercises are provided to retrain your motor control, balance, deep core, postural muscles, strength and endurance.
Postural correction and movement pattern training to reduce wear & tear and optimize motor control of your hips, spine, trunk and neck.
Deep core training and specific exercises for strength, endurance and repair of faulty muscle firing patterns that cause spasm, pain and tension.
If you’ve tried other approaches, you know that you usually have much less time with your physical therapist or provider and sometimes you are left to exercise without supervision. That’s not how we do things here.
During your appointments we customize your physical therapy treatments that help your lower back pain. This includes therapeutic exercise, strengthening, core retraining, whole body vibration exercises, multi-planar movement analysis, pelvic and lower back mobilization, nerve treatments, myofascial release, joint mobilization and lower back movement retraining. Because we are with you the entire appointment, you have the skilled guidance of your physical therapist who is adapting, modifying and progressing or regressing your program according to your pain, movement patterns, nerve irritation, stiffness or other needs.
For people who are living with lower back pain, we truly provide a holisitic, personalized approach to helping your lower back pain. We are not giving you a cookie cutter workout, we love this work and have had many patients progress much quicker and more effectively than the cookie cutter workouts!
At Purple Mountain, working with patients and seeing their recovery from lower back pain is a joy for us! Our PTs are devoted to providing you a healing experience at each visit. And, behind the scenes, we keep up with research, attend webinars, are members of professional societies, have a mentorship program for all our staff and have served to teach other physical therapists and professionals advanced treatment techniques. If you are struggling with lower back pain and want relief, we are here to help you. Call (616) 516-4334 to connect with us.
If You Want To Finally Get Rid of Your Low Back Pain, Consider The Benefits of Physical Therapy with Our Specialist PTs:
Personalized Care:
One of the main benefits of working with our back pain specialist PTs is our personalized approach that takes a detective-like methodology to uncover the many contributions to your pain. Our PTs consider your postural adaptations, head-to-toe fascia restrictions, spine alignment, deep core firing patterns, body type, age, lifestyle preferences, existing health conditions, your goals and how you respond to different types of movement.
Decreased pain:
Our PTs look to reduce your pain right away, by providing treatment beginning on day one that works to alleviate muscle spasm, pinched nerves and stiff joints. We examine and treat your movement patterns and deep core strength with the use of our rehabilitative ultrasound imaging. Empowered with this information, we provide manual therapies and therapeutic exercises that will diminish pain that’s directly caused by your movements.
Longterm Resolution of Low back pain:
Our goal is to get your entire spine, hips, pelvis, fascia, nerves and muscles ready for you to have many happy and healthy years ahead. We teach you what to do, based on a customized approach for your needs and preferences. With the help of our Spine Specialist PT’s, they will create a program that works for you and your lifestyle. These programs can be used and changed over time depending on what stage of healing you are in!
Restored mobility, core strength and spine muscle endurance:
Getting your spine, hips and pelvis to move optimally is key to resolving back pain. We work on your movement patterns, joint mobility, fascial and muscle stiffness and even address the mobility of your nerves so that they are not pinched and hurting you. If your back muscles are weak, we coach you with very detailed instructions on how to get the right core muscles strong again to aid in recovering your full range of motion and reduce pain.
May eliminate the need for surgery:
We have helped many, many people avoid back surgery. Yes, we have worked with a lot of individuals who come to us for post-op recovery and we can help them feel confident in their back. Yet, we love to share in your win of avoiding surgery! Patients are elated to not have back surgery. Recently, we were treating a surgeon who was experiencing severe sciatica and was planning back surgery, but really, really wanted physical therapy to help him avoid surgery, if possible. He feared that a first surgery for his back would lead to subsequent surgeries for his back in his lifetime and he feared for his own ability to sustain his career. Our PTs agreed with his assessment and feel that surgery should only ever be considered as a last resort. With patience and the right PT interventions, he completely resolved all of his back pain and leg pain. And, he is able to perform surgeries for his patients, golf, take care of kids and be painfree. He keeps in touch and continues to do the specific exercises we taught him, because he knows they are customized to his needs. Physical therapy is one of the most proactive ways to attempt to resolve back pain conservatively. If you want more information about working with our specialist PTs, reach out to us at (616) 516-4334 or ask us a question hereand we will be in touch.
Reduces the risk of further injury:
If you are required to do repetitive movements due to your job duties or athletic activity, our PTs gets your movement patterns, strength and mobility to a level where you can be confident that you are reducing your risk for further wear and tear on your back and future injury. This goes along with how our PT’s will customize your exercises to ensure they fit within your lifestyle and use of functional exercises to improve movements and improve your lifespan!
Reduces the risk of falls:
If you experience back pain, have poor posture or a degeneration that causes pain and mobility impairments, you are at higher risk for falling. One of the hallmarks of Physical Therapy at Purple Mountain PT is our drive to correct your balance and posture. We use whole body vibration training to challenge your deep core, balance and vestibular systems. We want you to be quick on your feet, responsive to balance challenges and having strong legs, hips and spine to reduce your risk for falling. A benefit of our PT is that we design a plan to improve your balance, as well as improve coordination to reduce your risk of falls!
What do you consider to be the factors that may be contributing to your lower back pain? Let our PTs know!
Consider things like repeated movements you perform during the day, how much sitting you do, you job duties, sports, stressful life events, depression, sleep problems, any recent injuries, falls, or accidents, as well as family history. Our physical therapists take a keen interest in knowing who you are and understanding these factos so we can develop a treatment program that will best work for you that is customized and flexible for you! If you have questions about working with our physical therapists, just give us a call at 616-516-4334 to connect with us or you can submit a question to us and we will respond to you.
Our primary goal here at Purple Mountain PT, is to help you live your life, free from lower back pain. We want you to avoid surgery, get off of pain medications and be confident that you can enjoy life without back pain.
Physical therapy has been shown to reduce the need for surgery when it comes to back pain and help you find alternative and long-lasting ways to get you out of pain and back to your best self! We understand that you may have tried PT or other interventions before and may still have pain. But, you did not try our holisitic approach and working with our specialist PTs. To learn more about our methods, reach out to us at 616-516-4334 to speak to a knowledgable staff member today.
We take pride in helping patients through effective, natural and holistic therapies. We have an entire team of amazing physical therapists here at Purple Mountain PT to help you feel relief! Our low back pain specialist physical therapists provide you with a personalized approach to helping you resolve your current back pain and keep you pain-free for the long term and not just a short-term fix.
By combining hands-on manual therapy treatments with rehabilitative ultrasound imaging, therapeutic exercise, postural correction, deep core retraining and education, it is our goal that you can live your life without lower back pain. If this is resonating with you and you are seeking help for back pain, give us a call to have any questions answered or book your first evaluation! 616-516-4334 to connect with a staff member or ask us a question here and begin your road to feeling your best self again!
We are a specialty spine, pelvic health and TMJ PT clinic. All of our patients receive personalized care and private, one-on-one appts with our back & pelvic pain specialist PTs. We use a team approach, so every patient works with two of our specialist PTs so you can have the benefit of two people helping you, figuring out your root causes of back pain and guiding you through your personalized treatment plan. Patients tell us that Purple Mountain PT is a special place for healing and they leave appointments feeling uplifted, able to move and in less pain! It is a privilege to help our patients and we pledge to give you our best so you can feel relief.
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