Physical Therapy Can Help You Strengthen Your Core 

Physical Therapy Can Help You Strengthen Your Core 

Have you noticed that your back pain seems to make standing upright more difficult, that you don’t feel as balanced as you once used to? Believe it or not, these are signs of core muscle weakness. At ARC Physical Therapy, our physical therapists can help you figure out if your core is weak, and more importantly, how to get it strong again!

Your core muscles help you do a lot – from sitting, to walking, to getting up and down from chairs. If your core muscles are weak, they may be affecting your function and possibly your pain levels.
Our team of physical therapists can assess your core and determine if it is affecting your daily activities. With proper guidance, you can learn how to get strong and engage your muscles the way they were designed to move!

Contact ARC Physical Therapy today to figure out how we can help you strengthen your core muscles and improve your overall health.

What are the core muscles?

When most people think of core muscles, they immediately think of the abdominals. However, the muscles of the core comprise the lower back, hip, pelvis, pelvic floor, and even the diaphragm muscle.
The muscles that make up your core are designed to help stabilize your body, support your posture, and allow your skeleton to move appropriately. When any of the muscles within that group become weak, your trunk experiences instability, which makes it difficult for your body to function correctly.
The stability of the trunk plays a role in maintaining an upright posture and helping to change positions when sitting, standing, and walking. Core strength is also essential in sports performances, allowing the body to balance and control movements while running, jumping, and sustaining contact.
Significant weakness in the core will often lead to compensations and straining different body areas, most commonly the back and neck muscles. As a result, this leads to undesirable consequences, such as poor posture, fatigue, or pain.

How physical therapy can help strengthen your core

Our licensed physical therapists will conduct a physical evaluation to determine where the weakness is rooted and what muscles must be strengthened to correct it.
Whether you feel pain in your back, neck, shoulders, or legs, we will thoroughly analyze your posture, movement, and strength to pinpoint precisely what is causing your pain. From there, we will create an individualized treatment plan for you based on your specific needs, aimed at strengthening your core, improving your posture, and alleviating pain.
Core stability is about muscular strength and proper sensory input. This sensory input alerts the central nervous system about the movements and positions you are putting your body through. This means completing specific exercises designed to help your body react to different movements.
Our therapists will design a program to teach you how to use your core muscles properly. We will create a strength program that focuses on core-specific exercises and progresses to multi-joint free weight exercises to train the core muscles adequately.
We will provide constant feedback and allow refinement of movements to ensure the core provides optimal spinal stabilization.

What to expect in physical therapy

When your core is strong, reactive, and mobile, it can perform at optimal levels. Our team of physical therapists will assess your particular condition to identify how your core is affecting your function.
Your therapist can educate you on how your core affects your physical activity and contributes to the pain you may be experiencing. Through an individualized exercise program, you can reduce your pain, prevent the condition from worsening, and improve daily function.
In many cases, physical therapy can design appropriate core strengthening exercises and provide relevant feedback to your central nervous system that improves your function without aggravating your pain. Your therapist can help you reclaim a healthy lifestyle!