Therapeutic Exercise

A few specific movements for endurance, strength, or flexibility. Built for the problem we found, and for a week you will actually do.

Homework

Exercise here is a prescription, not a personality

The pain that eases on the table and returns on Thursday is often a strength and habit problem sitting next to the joint. Therapeutic exercise is how this office asks those muscles to work. It is not a boot camp, and it is not a stack of pages. The office’s own line is endurance, resistance, and flexibility, chosen for you.

Dr. Levitt practices at 6200 Excelsior Blvd, Suite 201, Saint Louis Park, MN 55416, phone 952-920-7535, since 1999 at this address and since 1987 in practice. He will not hand you another person’s packet. If you already have exercises from a physical therapist or a surgeon, bring them. We do not casually overwrite a post-surgical restriction.

Three kinds

Endurance, resistance, flexibility

Most plans use one or two of these, not a sampler of all three on day one.

Endurance
Repeating a tolerable movement long enough that the neck or back can last a workday. This is stamina of the part that failed, not a running program you did not ask for.
Resistance
Load, progressed slowly, so the muscles that should have protected the joint actually can. Body weight is enough for most of what we send home. A gym is not required.
Flexibility
Range you lost to guarding. The stretch is specific. A generic hamstring poster is not automatically your exercise, and forcing a painful direction is not flexibility.

What the movements are for

Aims already listed by the office

More usable motion
Less unnecessary tension in muscle and the tissue around it
Joints that move instead of hitching
Circulation during the movement, not as a slogan
Balance and coordination when those were part of the problem
Less rigidity in a back or neck that has been braced for weeks

Breathing and coordination are on that list because some people brace so hard they stop moving well. We are not running a breathing seminar. If balance is unsafe, the exercise is paused. Dizziness, a truly unstable inflammatory flare, and the period after some surgeries are reasons to wait. The wait is a medical decision, not a motivational one.

Neck exercises are not low-back exercises. A disc that prefers one direction does not get the opposite stretch because it was on a poster. The disc care says that directly. Neck ownership is neck pain. Low-back ownership is back pain.

How a program is built

Shown in the room, then cut down until it fits

You do the movement once with feedback. If the form falls apart, the exercise is too ambitious and it gets simpler. You leave with a number of repetitions you can remember. Writing “3 sets of 15” for twelve moves is how sheets die in the car. We would rather you own two.

Soreness the next day can be ordinary effort. Pain that changes where it travels is not. Ice after a session is optional and is optional, as with an ice pack, for flares, not as a required chaser. An adjustment can still be the visit when the joint, not the muscle, is the limit. See adjustments.

There is no class schedule and no fee chart here. Call 952-920-7535 or use the new-patient appointment. Wear clothes you can move in. The address is 6200 Excelsior Blvd, Suite 201, Saint Louis Park, MN 55416.

Progress

The exercise worked if the week got easier

We recheck the same task: longer sitting, an easier lift, a turn of the head that no longer pinches. A perfect workout log with the same pain is not progress. If the movements are honest and the pain is not changing, the plan changes. That can mean a different exercise, a different service, or a different clinician. It does not mean “try harder.”

Examples of a short list, not a program to copy

A neck that stiffens at a laptop might get two drills: a slow turn each direction that stays short of arm pain, and a shoulder-blade squeeze you can do in a chair. Those are illustrations of size, not a prescription you should start from this paragraph. Your list is written after the neck exam.

A low back that hates long sitting might get a short walk on the hour and a hip hinge practiced with a broomstick so the spine does not round under a box. Again, an illustration. If sitting is fine and lifting is the trigger, the list flips. Sciatica that worsens with one of those moves gets that move deleted the same day.

An ankle sprain, once a clinician has said it is not a fracture, might later get balance on one foot beside a counter. Early on, the homework may only be protected range, not balance. Healing sets that timing. The homework still has to match the stage.

People ask for “core” work. If the abdomen is bracing so hard the back cannot move, more bracing is the wrong hobby. If the back collapses the moment you pick up a bag, some endurance in the trunk may be the missing piece. The word core is not specific enough to be the plan.

Write the list where you will see it. A note on the phone beats a PDF. Recheck in the office by doing the move, not by saying you did it. If two weeks of honest practice leave the same limitation, we change the move or we stop calling exercise the answer.

Travel weeks, night shifts, and childcare change the dose. Say which week you are actually in. A plan that assumes a quiet morning on the floor will be skipped, and then both of us will pretend it failed. Five minutes beside the counter can be the honest version. Holding your breath and racing the reps is not endurance. It is rushing. Slow enough to keep the form is the point of a short list. If you need a video to remember, we can describe the move in words you can film yourself doing once in the room, for you, not for the internet.

Stop entirely if you are ill, if a surgeon has not cleared a recent operation, or if the pain has changed sides or started traveling. Restart only after someone looks again. Consistency is useful. Consistency through a new nerve symptom is not discipline. It is the wrong assignment. If you miss several days, resume at the easier dose rather than doubling up to catch up. Catching up is how a tolerable move becomes a flare. Tell us what you actually did. The retest is more honest when that report is.

Questions

Questions about the home exercises

Equipment, pain rules, and what this is not.

Do I need a gym membership?

No. Most of what Dr. Levitt prescribes can be done at home with little or no equipment. If a movement needs a band or a light weight, that is said out loud. A membership is not the treatment.

How often are the exercises done?

Often several days a week, matched to the week you have, not to an ideal athlete’s calendar. A short session you complete beats a long sheet you avoid. We change the dose if soreness is replacing the movement.

Will exercise replace the adjustment?

Not when a joint is stuck and needs a contact. Exercise is how the gain survives until the next visit, and sometimes how you need fewer visits. The adjustment is the contact. The homework is what you repeat at home.

What if the exercise increases pain?

Stop that one and tell the office. Muscle effort can feel unfamiliar. Sharp pain, pain that travels farther down an arm or leg, or new weakness is not effort. Do not push through a nerve symptom.

Is this physical therapy?

It is therapeutic exercise prescribed inside this chiropractic office: endurance, resistance, and flexibility aimed at the problem we found. It is not a physical therapy clinic, and it is not a post-surgical protocol unless the surgeon has cleared you to move.

Often combined

Exercise rarely stands alone

These are the visits that create the homework.

Address

6200 Excelsior Blvd, Suite 201
Saint Louis Park, MN 55416

Phone

952-920-7535

Hours

Mon / Thu:8:30–11:30am · 2:30–5:30pm
Tue / Fri:8:30am – 11:30am
Wed:10:00am – 12:00pm
Sat:By Appointment
Sun:Closed