Empowered PT

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!

08/15/2022

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!

02/04/2021

Knee Pain (Patellofemoral pain)

Patellofemoral pain is an umbrella term that generally means pain around or behind the knee cap, most commonly felt with squats and going up stairs. There are a lot of different possible causes for this type of pain including limited joint mobility both at the knee and the hip, limited hip flexor mobility and length, as well as poor quad, hamstring, and glute strength.

Today’s post focuses on glute strength, particularly glute medius, and why it’s important. Having poor glute strength will often leads to poor mechanics with certain activities like squats and stairs which end up putting more forces on certain parts of your knee especially if you’re quad dominant which most people are. Overtime your body continues to promote more of this muscle imbalance and those activities eventually become painful from all the excessive forces put on the knee.

The clips above are 2 of some exercises I like to use early on when teaching someone how to contract their glutes before we work on harder exercises like squats and lunges.

1. Clamshells: important to not let the top hip roll back as you lift the knee up.

2. Sideplank hip abduction: great for working your core as well as the hips. Push the bottom knee into the table to lift your hips up even higher, should feel it on both sides when done correctly.

Although it's just one aspect of treating knee pain, having strong glutes play a major role in preventing and treating back, hip, and even ankle pain so make sure to show them some love in your training!

01/29/2021

Late stage shoulder rehab❗️❗️

Whenever rehabbing a shoulder injury it is always important to include strengthening exercises in the overhead and weight bearing positions. This is especially true for athletes that want to get back to heavy lifting like benching, overhead press, or pushups and pull-ups.

The first two videos are two exercises I like to use to promote overhead strength and stability.

The last video is a “push-up plus” on an inverted BOSU. This promotes good scapular control in that weight bearing position making it extremely difficult when done correctly.

All 3 exercises are great not only for rehab purposes but also an intense shoulder warm up before getting into heavier compound lifts during a workout to help prevent injuries!

01/27/2021

LOW BACK PAIN VS MRI ❗️

Interesting article looking at the correlation between significant findings on an MRI with actual back pain!

If you swipe through you can see that there are several spinal changes that show up on an MRI in individuals of all ages that DO NOT actually have any low back pain. These changes can be things like bulging discs, herniated discs, etc. After performing a systematic review they concluded that many of these changes can result from normal aging and it does not always correlate to pain or pathology!

So what does that mean for the individual?
You are NOT your MRI !!!

As physical therapists we always get patients coming to us for low back pain and they immediately chalk up their pain to some type of bulging disc that they found on an MRI several years ago. They say it almost as if to say they don't actually think their current pain will get better because of what they saw on an image of their body a very long time ago.

When dealing with back pain, imaging is just one part of the equation. It is important to look at the entire system because looking at just one picture will never tell the whole story. Getting great care and having a good team behind you will help you reach your goals and live an active and healthy life!

Reference:
Brinjikji W, Luetmer PH, Comstock B, et al. Systematic literature review of imaging features of spinal degeneration in asymptomatic populations. AJNR Am J Neuroradiol. 2015;36(4):811-816. doi:10.3174/ajnr.A4173

01/18/2021

Deadlifts and Back Pain 🚨

Most people think deadlifts are a dangerous exercise for your back and can lead to low back pain. While that may be true if a person is using too much weight or bad form, deadlifts can actually be a great way to prevent AND get rid of back pain when properly used in a rehab process. It's a great exercise to train someone to bend forward and pick up a heavy object using their glutes and hamstrings while keeping a strong low back with minimal pressure as long as you have good mechanics and foundational strength in key areas.

It’s important to remember each case is different, but when an athlete or lifter who trains with compound movements has pain from their training, the answer is not to avoid that exercise but to correct their form and progressively build strength to get them back to doing what they love!

If you have pain with lifting or exercising, call for a free consultation!

01/05/2021

Empowered PT, now offering Physical Therapy services out of Wyckoff, NJ, is dedicated to providing high quality personalized care for active individuals looking to take back control of their health and live how they want to live. Dr. Bishoy Youssef's goal is to empower each patient he works with to see their body’s full potential to heal naturally so that they can live active, healthy, and happy lives.

Check out our website https://www.empoweredptnj.com or schedule a FREE Consultation with Dr. Youssef at 201-820-7920 to discuss how Empowered PT can get you back to doing what you love better than ever before!