Assisted Stretching vs. Physical Therapy

Stretching is a well-known and often used technique to improve muscle condition, flexibility, and strength. It’s often part of athletic warm-up and cooldown routines as well as a common treatment used within physical therapy sessions. 

At Active Care Chiropractic & Rehabilitation, with six locations in Lafayette Hill, the Main Line, East Falls, Elkins Park, Manayunk and Hatfield, Pennsylvania, we offer assisted stretching, a specialized technique in which our caregiver helps you move muscles beyond your normal range of motion. It’s an effective way to reduce muscle tension, improve flexibility, and build increased range of motion. 

Assisted stretching vs. physical therapy

Physical therapy is a field of medicine focused on the science of body movement and including modalities targeted toward a range of goals, including injury rehabilitation, pain management, joint mobility and more. 

Assisted stretching is a specialization within the physical therapy and rehabilitation umbrella. While assisted stretching can use apparatus like bands or towels, we use it to describe proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation, or PNF. 

PNF is a particular type of assisted stretching in which our practitioner guides you through a series of movements that allow you to stretch muscles beyond the range of passive stretching. Let’s take a closer look at how assisted stretching works and the benefits you can gain from it. 

The basics of assisted stretching in practice

Each PNF exercise has two fundamental parts. The first includes a partner-assisted passive stretch. Our therapist moves a muscle into a stretched position, often moving the muscle or muscle group beyond the range you can stretch them yourself. 

The therapist then holds the muscle in a stretched position as you attempt to contract the muscle against this resistance. After a period of time where you force muscle contraction, you’ll then relax the muscle before performing additional repetitions. 

PNF usually uses patterns of stretches, contractions, and relaxations to achieve certain goals for your muscle groups and the target of the assisted stretching therapy. 

Benefits of assisted stretching

Muscles attach to bone via tendon tissue. With injury or underuse, the muscle/tendon unit may be shorter or tighter than normal, and these are typical targets for assisted stretching therapy. 

The key benefits of assisted stretching include: 

• Improved flexibility: Muscle groups become more capable of efficient contraction and expansion
• Increased range of motion: Increased length of muscle/tendon units help you gain increased mobility
• Muscle strength gains: More effective at preserving muscle strength when compared with static stretching for some muscle groups.
• Lowered pain levels: Improvements to muscle groups help to transfer force loads away from regions of chronic pain
• Improved balanced and stability

The improvements to muscle tone may even help your body alignment. This can extend the benefits of chiropractic adjustments by holding your body and spine in balance. 

Ask us more about assisted stretching and how you might benefit from this targeted therapy. Call or click to book your visit to the nearest location of Active Care Chiropractic & Rehabilitation today.