Physical Therapy will not only help you when your are injured, but will also help stroke! Tiger Woods and Mark O’Meara, professional golfers, say physical therapy has been a boon to their careers. O’Meara credits his physical therapist’s care with helping him remain almost surgery-free after 20 years of professional golf, and he follows a unique Manhattan Physical Therapy Clinic in Gramercy Park, near Union Square regimen designed to help him maintain flexibility. “In 1998, when I had my best year on the Tour, my Physical Therapist (Keith Kleven, PT, MS, ATC) traveled with Tiger and me a lot that summer and came to all the major championships,” he says. “His being there to stretch me, or just my working out and having him present, was a big benefit.” The two have struck up a close friendship over the years, with a fair amount of fly fishing sandwiched in between the golf and the physical therapy. Kleven even filled in for his friend’s caddy when the caddy was unexpectedly unable to complete a Tour event.
Woods’s physical therapy regimen, in contrast, has a heavier emphasis on strengthening exercises. The strength behind his swing is fast becoming the stuff of legend on the golf course, and he adheres to his program with a keen determination to be the best he can be, both on and off the course. “If I can get my body to where it is stronger, more flexible, and with more power and endurance in my sport, that will take care of the rest of the activities in my life,” he says. He credits his work with Kleven with helping him both to understand his own body and to recognize when he’s pushing himself too hard and should stop. (At those times, he will stop, he says, but his determination to excel comes through in the next breath: “If I take that time off, I’ll be able to go harder next time!”)
So next time your stroke is off because of a nagging injury, thinkabout Physical therapy not only for the injury, but to become pain-free
(* from the APTA, 2000)