Manual physical therapy is a combination of joint mobilization and soft tissue massage to help re-balance joints and tissues that have become tight or misaligned. Gentle muscle energy techniques can also help with alignment dysfunction. When a body is injured, bad patterns can develop that can contribute to worsening the pain a person is experiencing. Exercises alone can contribute to worsening the patterns of imbalance. Manual therapies are interventions that can stop these bad patterns from continuing and help the exercises to help instead of hurt.

Often times if manual techniques are not used appropriately, or at all, then exercises will not work as well. Often patient’s reps are counted during appointments, but no one explains the importance of proper form for each exercise. This leads to strengthening “cheater muscles” instead of the primary muscles that we need stronger. It is easy to see why this can easily lead to a patient feeling worse when they are working hard to try to feel better.

Dr McCormick is passionate about making her patients feel better. From the start you will know that she is here to support your needs and goals. She wants to know about your story and uses that to get you where you want to be. She will pay attention to the details of what you say and do during each appointment and use this information to help get you feeling good as quickly as possible.

When pelvic pain or sometimes incontinence is the problem, it is ideal to eventually perform an intravaginal muscle assessment. I do not need a speculum or instruments to do the internal evaluation and assessment, and only 1-2 gloved fingers are use during the assessment. This assessment is to check for excessive muscle tone in the pelvic floor muscles. A manual muscle test to assess for weakness can also be performed. If there are symptoms of prolapse, this can also be assessed.

I do treat both male and female pelvic floor dysfunction. For women, typically an intravaginal assessment is performed, but intra-anal treatments can be more effective if there are anal spasms occurring. For male dysfunction, external work can be helpful, but often intra-anal work is necessary to improve blood flow and relax the deeper internal muscle layers of the pelvic floor. This is obviously a sensitive subject for both men and women, and I leave it up to each individual patient to decide when and if they are ready to tackle internal work.