Our Services

At Prime PT & Wellness, we specialize in providing individualized physical therapy services tailored to your unique needs. Our goal is to empower you on your journey to improved wellness and overall health.

 

Manual Therapies

Manual therapy involves the use of skilled hand techniques to mobilize joints that have lost their mobility, or to activate tissues that have lost their normal length or extensibility.

This hands-on therapy can include skilled manual joint mobilizations, myofascial release techniques, the use of instruments designed for soft tissue mobilization, orthopedic cupping, and stretching techniques (passive and active assisted). 

 Uses a combination of manual therapy to decrease soft tissue restrictions and improve mobility of the tissue and joints, and skilled exercise prescription to strengthen the joints in the newly acquired motion to decrease risk of re- injury.

 

 

Orthopedic Cupping

​If you’re seeking an effective solution to your pain or have another goal, such as scar tissue reduction, and performance enhancement for your sport, consider orthopedic cupping.  Our therapists are experts in this therapy and has helped many patients find relief from their pain and more. The difference between orthopedic cupping and massage is that cupping uses suction and pulls tissues upward, and massage employs pressure and pushes tissue downward.

 

Orthopedic cupping can enhance muscle performance as it pulls tissues upward and allows for extensibility of the fascia surrounding the muscles, bringing more blood flow and oxygen to the muscles. At PRIME PT & Wellness we prefer to combine myofascial release, cupping, and stretching to get the best results.

What are some of the Benefits?

 

Orthopedic cupping is used to

• Relieve trigger points

• Stop a pain cycle

• Reduce scar tissue

• Enhance muscle performance

What’s Involved?

In some cases, cups are placed on the skin and kept stationary for a period. In other cases, the cups move or glide along the tissue, in addition to certain scar tissue techniques and stretching methods used while the cups are applied.
 

How Often Should I Come In?

Orthopedic cupping is usually done one to two times per week, with clinical discretion based on client’s condition.

 

​​Dry Needling

At PRIME PT & Wellness, we’re dedicated to offering specific modalities that can help our patients heal and thrive. We’re proud to offer dry needling, a focused therapy designed to improve wellness and help patients just like you recover from injury.

What is Dry Needling?

Dr. Cristine Drake is certified in dry needling, which is an effective tool to reduce muscle spasms, trigger points, and resolve chronic pain cycles. This therapy can be used with electrotherapy or without depending on the condition. Our team has had success with resolving/reducing chronic plantar fasciitis, hip pain, back and neck pain in addition to other chronic conditions.

Acute pain associated with muscle spasms can also be beneficial with dry needling to resolve muscle spasms, especially when electrotherapy is included, which can enable a person to get out of pain and back to their normal activities.

Differences Between Acupuncture and Dry Needling

While dry needling and acupuncture both use monofilament needles without medication for therapeutic purposes, dry needling does not attempt to move energy or “qi,” nor does it rely on diagnoses based on traditional Chinese medicine. Dry needling is used by physicians, physical therapists, chiropractors, and osteopaths to treat muscles, ligaments, tendons, subcutaneous fascia, scar tissue, peripheral nerves, and neurovascular bundles associated with a number of neuromusculoskeletal conditions.

What Conditions Can it Help?

This focused therapy can help take people out of the pain cycle and restore normal neuromuscular pathways.

Patients may find improvements in chronic conditions (>3 months) such as neck and back pain, chronic tension headaches, TMJ, plantar fasciitis, hip pain, ITB Syndrome, and shoulder pain. In addition, post-surgical scars can be reduced and helped by a form of needling in which a herringbone technique of needles are placed with unidirectional winding and “tenting” which helps stretch fascia surrounding the surgical site.

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Pilates for Spinal Stabilization​

Developed by Joseph Pilates in the 1920s, the Pilates Method is a system of repetitive exercises performed on a mat or other equipment with the goal of promoting strength, stability, and flexibility. Pilates is an integral part of our approach to addressing injuries.

To ensure full recovery, we address not only the injury, but also how the body works together. 

At Prime PT & Wellness

we use a Rehab V2Max reformer, Cadillac Reformer springboard, and spine corrector, in addition to specific props, to ensure we can work with any level of patient to enhance their well-being and maximize their potential for recovery. We also use Pilates based exercises because it increases body awareness in space, which helps our clients improve their body awareness and movement patterns.

 

A Focus on Body Awareness 

At its core, Pilates rehab emphasizes this neuronal circuitry, as the individual must attend to all the components of their own body. Pilates enhances traditional physical therapy rehabilitation with an emphasis on proprioception. Pilates is a very effective tool for patients who have lost body awareness due to injury or surgery, as our joints and tendons have receptors that tell our body where it is in space.

The springs used in Pilates-based rehabilitation can allow movement in a functional manner versus weights that are more 2 dimensional. For example, the hip circles done with Pilates springs can not only strengthen deep in the hip joint, but the spinal stabilizers are also working to maintain pelvic alignment, which in turn will allow a person to strengthen their core spinal stabilizer muscles.

Our program follows core concepts that include  

• Maintaining an optimal pelvic alignment 

• Core engagement for spinal stability and mobility  

• Upper and lower body movement 

We must have proper core stability and mobility to have proper movement of our limbs. We cannot separate our body parts. 

Considering the Whole Body 

In many traditional physical therapy clinics, only the injured site is addressed without looking at the body as a whole. To ensure full recovery, we address not only the injury, but also how the body works together. Pilates, in addition to our in-depth knowledge of body movement through our physical therapy education, allows us to successfully treat our patients.

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Stretch Clinic

Enhance your athletic or recreational activity performance with a comprehensive stretching program.  You will receive an evaluation to determine what muscles are not at optimal length and receive stretches to improve the muscle length to normal. Adaptive shortening of muscles can be caused by poor posture, compensations associated with past injuries, or poor body mechanics from activities such as sitting too long in one position or overuse. 

 

 

We’re proud to offer patients a custom stretch program that can help them improve flexibility, reduce pain, move easier.

 

Benefits of Stretching

In today’s world, many of us work jobs that result in tight, short muscles. Do you sit at a desk all day? Your hip flexors are more than likely shorter than they should be.

 

Add a computer screen to that equation you’re looking at a world of tension in the upper back, neck shoulders.

 

A physical therapist on our team can craft a custom stretch plan exactly for your unique needs. We’ll learn more about your day-to-day life which stretches will work best to improve your body. Many of our patients have experienced benefits including:

 

•  Easier movement

•  Better posture

•  Improved balance

•  Reduced pain

•  Blood circulation and digestion improvements

•  And many more benefits​​

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Neurologic Physical Therapy

Specializing in:

• stroke rehabilitation

• Balance Disorders

• Abnormal Gait, Difficulty Walking

• movement disorders

• Fall Prevention