Empowered PT

Empowered PT offers individualized Physical Therapy to the northern NJ community that caters to each

10/12/2022

Don’t feel your “core” during planks?
Try this modification next time you try it.
In the first picture you can see the lower back arching. By staying in that over extended position you’re depending more on your low back muscles and passive structures in your lumbar spine to hold you up without actually challenging your trunk.

On the right the hips are rolled back and the pelvic is tucked under which recruits a lot more trunk activation and puts less pressure on the low back muscles by keeping it in a more neutral position. This makes the plank significantly harder because now it forces the “core” to actually hold you up, don’t be surprised if you can’t hold the position for as long as before.

10/06/2022

Client Spotlight 🚨

Special shout out to Juana for being an amazing client. When she first started she had a lot of pain with walking, stairs, and any type of squatting movement. She couldn’t even commute to NYC for work without having some type of discomfort. Her commitment to not only drive an hour for her sessions but to also make sure that she keeps up with her plan in between sessions shows how dedicated she was to getting better. Working with motivated clients who are looking for more than the traditional hot pack and stretching “rehab” is what makes it all worth it.

10/05/2022

Working on optimizing movement patterns with
Never a fan of just telling someone not to do a specific exercise, especially when it comes to deadlifts. Instead it’s better to look at how a person is moving in combination with other possible contributing factors to create optimal results!
Don’t let someone tell you “just stop doing that” there’s always a better way!

10/01/2022

1-on-1 care should always be a priority. Work with someone who will challenge you while making the necessary corrections and modifications to reach your goal!

08/09/2021

Book your slot at on Aug 21st to finally get that injury checked out and how you can correct it without having to stop training!
Also be sure to check out their awesome training space and programs!

Don’t let pain stop you from training and being your best!

DM for more info or for booking!

06/02/2021

Your rehab should be challenging 🚨🚨🚨

Rehabbing an injury should consist of hard work and new challenges, especially when it comes to any type of athlete.

Here we have a high-level dancer rehabbing her shoulder. Once we got her out of pain, the goal was to strengthen her shoulder in different positions while forcing her to engage other muscles like her core, something that she’ll use often when she’s dancing.

If you’re an active individual or athlete dealing with pain and your rehab consists solely of passive treatments like massages and ice, you probably should re-assess what your goals are.

1️⃣ Banded uppercut in half-kneeling
2️⃣ Bird Dog Rows

05/07/2021

Let’s talk about the glutes 🍑

Glutes are made up of 3 different muscles as shown in the first picture. They are easily one of the most important muscle groups when it comes to performance and fixing pain. Not only do they control how your hips move, but they also play a huge role in stabilizing your pelvis with different movements. If these muscles aren’t as strong as they need to be your body will tend to have extra load going through other parts of your body like the low back or your knees.

Things like low back pain and runner’s knee, two very common injuries, are often significantly improved once the individual strengthens their glutes and learns how to use them in different positions.
We see people all the time try to fix their pain with hot packs, massage guns, stretching, foam rolling and whatever else there is when sometimes it just takes a good strengthening and mobility program to address the imbalances.

Next time you get up and think “I need a massage”, ask yourself do you really need that massage or do you just need to strengthen your glutes the right way.

1️⃣lateral band walks
2️⃣side plank hip abduction

04/08/2021

Pain with lifting overhead?
Here is a great exercise to improve shoulder stability throughout full range of motion. By resisting the band’s forward pull, his scapular muscles have to be engaged at all times, which is especially hard to do as his hands go past shoulder height into the overhead position.

For him specifically you can see a slight shoulder shrug on the right side as he gets into the overhead position which shows some weakness in his scapular stabilizers. Noticing subtle differences side to side and addressing them is key in a successful rehab process.

Not only does this expose and target areas of weakness but it’s also a greater warm up exercise before getting into some heavy pressing exercises when training!

03/09/2021

🚨ATTENTION ATHLETES AND WEEKEND WARRIORS 🚨

Come join us on March 27th at for a free injury screening and movement assessment!

Book your slot today to finally find out what’s been causing that nagging pain that you can’t seem to get rid of!

03/02/2021

Passive Treatment Vs. Active Treatment

Passive treatment usually involves the patient in a resting state while some type of manual or “hands on” work is done on them. This can include passive stretching, soft tissue mobilization, joint mobilization, or joint manipulation. These techniques are commonly used to reduce pain and tone, as well as improve mobility and pain free motion around a certain area or joint.

Active Treatment on the other hand involves the patient performing some type of movement in the form of stretching, mobility drills, strengthening exercises, or agility work.

While some therapists and other rehab specialists will differ in opinion, most believe that both have valuable roles in treating someone. The truth is both are highly effective when used together at the right time!

Passive treatment is very effective in reducing pain for many people, the problem however is a lot of people do not follow this up with active movement which will revert them back to their original condition. Over time the person then feels like they are dependent on constantly getting a “massage” or getting their back “cracked” every few weeks to get some relief with no possibility of long term changes.

On the other hand, if you follow up some of those passive treatments with active exercise or mobility drills, you’ll be able to take those short term changes and turn them into long term results so that you don’t have to keep getting the hands on work for relief.

Main take-away: Passive treatment has a very positive impact on a patient when used appropriately but make sure to follow it up with active movement and exercises to promote long term results!

02/17/2021

Knee Pain (Patellofemoral pain): Part 2️⃣

Picking up off of the last post, once a person is able to properly contract certain muscles like the glutes, quads, and hamstrings, it's important to start strengthening those muscles in weight bearing positions.

Here are a few more challenging exercises I like to use in the middle phase of rehabbing knee pain.

1️⃣ Wall Sits with Heel Raises: this is a great quad burner, the heel raises engage your soleus muscle which also play a huge role in stabilizing the knee.
2️⃣ Banded Goblet Squats: as opposed to barbell squats, goblet squats and front squats can target the quads more which can increase tolerance to load.
3️⃣ Bulgarian Split Squats: Great for building strength and single leg stability, important to maintain good knee alignment as you go down.

These are just a few of the more challenging exercises but important to remember that every case is different and often times people need certain modifications at first to these exercises like limiting how far they go down or using supports like TRX straps to offload the knee.

If you're having knee pain with exercise or just daily activities, call for a free consultation!

Address

436 W Main Street
Wyckoff, NJ
07481

Website

http://empoweredptnj.com/

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