What is Aquatic Therapy?
Lafayette Rehabilitation Services is proud to have the only dedicated therapy pool in the Greater Lafayette area.
Aquatic Therapy is more than just doing therapy in water. Aquatic therapy provides many advantages. These include:
• Buoyancy:
The buoyancy of your body diminishes the affects of gravity on your
body. Therefore you will experience diminished weight bearing and
diminished compressive forces on your joints while in the water. This
allows those with chronic pain, especially arthritic pain, to exercise
easier as compared to being on land.
• Resistance:
Water's natural ability to provide resistance allows for exercise to be
performed in all directions. This resistance combined with the buoyancy
allows strengthening exercises with diminished joint stresses.
• Warmth:
The warm environment of the water allows for increased muscle
relaxation. This in turn promotes increased circulation and increased
rates of healing.
• Hydrostatic Forces:
This is water's natural compression on the body. This can help decrease
swelling in a joint, especially when exercising. Hydrostatic forces can
also help improve your positional awareness. This is important when
working to improve posture and during recovery of ligament injuries.
Our SwimEx Therapy Pool is specifically designed for rehabilitation purposes. It has specially designed surfaces that facilitate a multitude of exercises. The SwimEx can also create an artificial current in the pool. This allows additional opportunities for strengthening and stability exercises that cannot be done in regular pool.
The use of Aquatic Therapy can be utilized during many different phases of a patient's rehabilitation process. Aquatic Therapy can be utilized as a patient's sole means of rehabilitation or as a compliment to traditional land based exercises. No swimming skill is required.
For additional information on aquatic therapy click on the links below:
• Aquatic Therapy Section of the American Physical Therapy Association
• SwimEx
