Therapeutic Activities

A clinic bed or a padded transfer box is built to a fixed, standard height, which is fine for building general capacity but is not the same task as getting out of your own bed, which might sit lower or higher than that standard by several inches. Rehearsing a transfer against your actual bed, your actual chair or your actual stairs means the strength, the sequencing and the balance you build are the exact ones the task at home is going to ask for. Jennifer Kirby, PT, DPT practices transfers and functional activity in your own home, anywhere within 30 minutes of Eau Claire. Call (715) 450-5001. A closed kinetic chain movement is one where your hand or foot stays planted against something, a floor, a countertop, a wall, while the rest of the body moves around that fixed point. Standing up from a chair is a closed kinetic chain movement. So is pushing yourself up off a counter, or climbing a stair with your foot staying put on the tread until your weight shifts over it. The opposite, an open kinetic chain movement, is one where the hand or foot is free to move through the air, like kicking a leg out with nothing to push against. Both have a place in a plan, but closed kinetic chain work tends to carry over faster into daily function precisely because it matches how the body is actually loaded when you stand up, climb a step, or push off the arm of your own couch. Chair to bed. Lying to sitting. These sound simple written down, but each one is a small sequence of balance, timing and strength that a lot of recovery plans overlook because it never gets treated as its own skill. When a transfer gets rehearsed on equipment set to a standard clinic height, the pattern you build has to be re-learned all over again the first time you try it on your own, differently shaped, bed. A mobile physical therapy practice in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Jennifer Kirby, PT, DPT drives to you and treats you in your own home, so there is no clinic to get to and no waiting room to sit in.

Kirby PT — Solo practice. No referral required in Wisconsin. Call (715) 450-5001.