Inertial Exercise Trainer for Sports Specific Rehabilitation

The Impulse Inertial Exercise Trainer plays an important role at Repsher and Associates PT in helping patients regain their prior level of sport specific coordination, power, and endurance.

The inertial exercise trainer utilizes the inertia of decreasing weight on a low friction sled from 17.5 pounds to 0 pounds. This enables the recovering athlete to move at increasing speeds as the weight is reduced on the sled. This is not possible using weights, which work against gravity. A weight-loaded system can only move at a slow speed to avoid the acceleration of the weight away from the body.

Another advantage of the inertial trainer is that the exercise can be multidirectional. The multilevel cord allows us to attach the resistance to various body parts and even objects, such as a baseball or golf club handle — perfect for sport specific rehabilitation at the speeds that occur during sport. Various body positions, like standing on one foot during the exercise, can be used to stimulate the trunk muscles and increase core strength at the same time.

The trainer employs alternately concentric (shortening) and eccentric (lengthening) exercises. As the athlete learns to train the sport specific movement at higher speeds, their coordination, power, and endurance are all greatly enhanced. Professional athletes like Curt Schilling of the Philadelphia Phillies and Boston Red Socks and professional golfer Vijay Singh have benefitted from rehabilitation and sport specific training using the inertial trainer. We have found that all of our patients can receive comparable benefits from using the inertial trainer.

If you have suffered an athletic injury, or just want to learn sport specific exercises to improve your game, give our office a call to set up an appointment with one of our physical therapists and experts in human motion and exercise.