BEACHWOOD, Ohio — When one thinks of physical therapy, it's not uncommon to think of light weights, exercise bands, and low tables.
Walk into the Drusinsky Sports Medicine Institute at University Hospitals Ahuja Medical Center, and instantly, rehab takes on a whole different meaning.
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First, there's the football field, batting cage, basketball court, and ballet bar. Lining the walls are traditional weightlifting machines, treadmills, and other devices you'd expect to see in a gym.
The rehab area is filled with equipment attached to computers that not only work together, but can give physical therapists volumes of information on the type of injury the patient is dealing with, how recovery is going, and how it's impacting everything from gate to balance.
But that's not all.
"The other thing we do have is we do have an underwater treadmill, so that allows us to do a couple different things," Brent Pekarski, outpatient supervisor and director of Drusinsky's physical therapy residency program, said. "One, by being in the water, you're able to offload the joints so you can work at a specific percentage of your body weight, depending on how low we were to make the treadmill. The other thing we can do is it is just big enough that, for most people, you can actually swim in it, and we're able to make it current so you can swim against the current."
While the place was designed to help athletes get back into their specific games, it can also help the average weekend warrior recover from surgery, as well. 3News Senior health correspondent Monica Robins demonstrated three pieces of equipment usually reserved for pro sports facilities.
