Transform your practice with low-cost rehab equipment.

You don't need expensive equipment to provide truly effective rehab. I maintain a sports chiropractic office where I treat patients ranging from everyday moms to elite professional athletes. Early on in my career, I purchased enough state-of-the-art rehab equipment to fill the gym in my office. And after 7 years in practice, almost all of the equipment goes untouched.

Soon after opening my hi-tech (and expensive) office, I began to wonder what my patients were doing for rehab when they were not in the office. I did not like the feeling that patients were totally dependent on my rehab equipment and could only maintain progress if they came to my office. If a patient was seeing me twice per week, what were they doing the other 5 days?

I realized that effective rehab is a 7-day-per-week process. I needed a low-cost, effective rehabilitation program my patients could use at home every day. Using almost entirely low-cost tools, I transitioned my office into a highly effective and successful sports chiropractic and rehabilitation practice.

Low-Tech Rehab Success

Probably the most crucial component of low-cost rehabilitation equipment is effective rehab software. For relatively little expense, approximately $400, a chiropractor can have access to more than 2,000 individual exercises. My personal favorites are Exercise Pro and Phases Rehab. These allow a doctor to produce customized and extremely specific rehabilitation programs that patients can perform every day. This software allows the doctor to modify and increase the intensity and complexity of the patient's rehab exercises as needed, with almost no effort.

I know a lot of doctors believe that integrating rehab into their practices is too time-consuming and may decrease patient volume. However, I have found utilization of rehab software to actually speed a patient's recovery significantly. At first, this sounds like it would decrease patient volume, but because patients are becoming healthier faster, they tend to refer high numbers of new patients.

Having a Ball with Rehab

Exercise balls are by far my most utilized rehab tool. For an extremely low investment, patients are able to have an at-home rehab tool that they can use from the very beginning stages of rehabilitation to the most advanced core stabilization and multidimensional exercise program. There are three main types of rehab for which I will use an exercise ball: spinal decompression exercises, core stretching and strengthening, and balance and proprioceptive exercises.

Simply having a patient lie facedown over a ball creates a linear force that pulls on the body to create negative pressure between each vertebra. This is called spinal decompression. The negative pressure created within the disk has been shown to reduce symptoms associated with disk herniations and in some cases to even reduce the actual size of the disk herniations.

This finding has created a large market for extremely expensive decompression machines, which can cost a doctor between $10,000 and $80,000. I have found using an exercise ball to be an extremely economical and effective decompression tool. Patients can experience the benefit from decompression every day at home without feeling totally dependent on the doctor.

A Simple, Yet Effective Combination

Core stability is one of the most complex issues to properly address. I have found no piece of equipment more effective at restoring core strength and flexibility than an exercise ball combined with a properly designed rehab menu from one of the software programs mentioned above. Because an exercise ball can be used to stretch or strengthen almost any muscle in the body, a properly developed menu can target muscle imbalances causing core instability.

What is most impressive about the exercise ball is the multidimensional therapy that can be achieved. While the patient is working their core stability, they are also improving balance and proprioception. Because they are working on an unstable platform, their body is constantly working to improve the neuromuscular efficiency. An exercise that may seem basic when performed on the floor becomes much more difficult and complex when performed on the ball. The body's core and extremities must make constant adjustments in order to maintain proper balance. Each exercise now becomes a full-body, neuromuscular workout.

My conversion to a low-tech, low-cost rehabilitation specialist has had a dramatic effect on my patients and my practice. My patients are no longer waiting helplessly for their next appointment. They are at home or the gym rehabilitating their bodies and taking an active role in their progress and their health. I am no longer known as the doctor with the great office … I am now known as the doctor who puts together complete rehabilitation programs. All you need to do the same is a program and a ball.

Jonathan Greenberg, DC, CCEP, practices in Margate, NJ, where he specializes in sports chiropractic and treats many professional athletes from the NFL, MLB, and NHL, as well as Olympic athletes. He may be reached via e-mail at or (609) 823-9300.