>PT is also for neuromuscular reeducation, instruction on proper body mechanics, muscle firing patterns.....so, so much more.
But his time was paid for by the health insurance company. It is hard to justify insurance paying for using "proper body mechanics", unless it causes immediate health problems. Health insurance companies aren't there to help me become a better athlete.
Anyway, some of what he did involved proper body mechanics, things I didn't understand before he showed me.
E.g., I had learned a walking gait from a backpacking book called "The Complete Walker" (by Colin Fletcher), many years ago, that involved binging each foot directly in front of the other. (Colin called it "Indian Walking".) The PT said that, for a male with my poor flexibility, that was an unnatural and unhealthy technique.
Also, he and his assistant showed me that a straight posture should mostly be created by tightening the butt (which I had thought should only be done on the toilet), and to some extent by tightening the lower abdominals - not by consciously bending the spine, which creates an unnatural and unhealthy curvature.
He also had me stretch my hamstrings and nearby muscles, and my piriformis. Not only do they severely limit my range of motion, but those short muscles, he said, were the main cause of my knee pain.
And he had me strengthen a number of lower body muscles, which he thought contributed a bit to the pain. (Note that I had mostly stopped skating, and other lower body exercises due to a hernia and the aftermath of the surgery that the hernia created. Now I should be able to get back to them.)
The fact that the pain disappeared in 6 weeks of doing the exercises he and his TA showed me shows he was right.
>giving you the name of a textbook (without instruction on proper execution of technique) [is] wrong and ridiculous.
He and his assistant showed me how to do the exercises they told me to do.
I ASKED for the name of good book, because I wanted to learn more on my own, and to continue with more things after the insurance sessions were done. He did not know one, but finally relented after much pestering, and told the PT-assistant to give me the name of the textbook he was training with, which may be the most common textbook for PTs as well.
In fact, everything he did was excellent, and, I believe, was done much better than what a previous PT, many years ago, had me do for knee pain. That other PT thought I had knee tracking problems, due to unbalanced muscle strength, and had me do generic leg raises. It took that prior treatment a year of exercises to fix - if even it was responsible at all for the fix. It is a tribute to this PT that he didn't just take the easy way out and accept the previous PT's diagnosis, but conducted systematic tests and measurements, came to his own diagnosis, and created an effective treatment.
I only regret that I can't use him in an insurance-paid fashion, and that I can't afford him on my own.
P.S. He also showed me something that I find very strange. I can balance fairly well standing on one leg. In fact that was one of the exercises he gave me. But - if I close my eyes, it becomes an order of magnitude harder. I didn't realize I was using my eyes for balance. (Try it!) How weird is that?