Accessibility Tools

Skip to main content

Solving Pain: The Influence of Czech Rehabilitation Techniques

As physical medicine becomes increasingly specialized, chiropractors and therapists must remain educated and capable of offering the highest quality in their professional services, knowledge, and examination abilities. Regardless of whether you are entrusted with the care of an athlete, chronic pain syndrome patient, or post-surgical rehabilitation, we have the job of reaching successful outcomes for each individual we encounter.

We must find their real source of pain, their true sources of dysfunction. Even if it means identifying sources others do not know exist.

We should be able to perform orthopedic, neurological, and also functional assessment to not only diagnosis problems, but also determine how to prevent any future problems.

One such country that has encouraged this level of thinking among it’s doctors and therapists is the Czech Republic.

The emergence of Czech ideas within the United States has grown over the last 15-20 years. My mentor and residency director, Dave Juehring, DC, DACRB, CSCS and director of the Sports Injury & Rehabilitation Department at Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport, IA has one of the most extensive backgrounds in Czech approaches to manual medicine and rehabilitation within the United States. In my opinion, there is no brighter mind in the chiropractic rehabilitation world. He may not be well known by industry standards, but those that know him know his knowledge and skill set is second to none.

The knowledge and expertise he is able to share with his residents, rehabilitation interns, and students has a profound impact on our professional development.

Among many lessons, he really has helped us understand the approach taken within the Czech School of Manual Medicine as well as the Prague Rehabilitation School. The intent of this article is to share some of this knowledge and highlight how these Czech methods can improve rehabilitation outcomes and athletic performance.

Alternative Thinking
The Czech School of Manual Medicine truly has revolutionized the management of musculoskeletal pain. Early in the 1950s, neurologists by the names Vladimir Janda, Karel Lewit, and Vaclav Vojta took a special interest in the rehabilitation of the motor (aka movement) system. As western medicine became progressively more technologically driven, Janda and Lewit focused on the value of manual approaches such as chiropractic, joint mobilizations, and neuromuscular rehab techniques, such as PIR (post isometric relaxation) as critical pieces of the rehabilitation plan. Janda was instrumental in the assessment of muscle imbalances, Lewit’s in joint dysfunctional. Vojta was instrumental in the discovery of global reflex locomotion patterns.

Collectively, their research focused on joint dysfunction, muscle imbalance, and the assessment of faulty movement patterns.

These concepts became components of identifying “Functional Pathology of the Motor System”. In other words, identifying why someone has developed pain or a movement related problem. In contrast to traditional medicine, which had a growing emphasis on medical imaging (X-rays, CT scans, MRIs) to identify structural pathology as the cause of pain.

Developing Ideas and Techniques
The work of Janda, Lewit, and Vojta influenced the work of Pavel Kolar and his work now represents a very innovative and powerful approach to how the central nervous system not only controls but expresses movement. This approach is known as Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization (DNS). The application of DNS has value from the neurologically impaired child to adults dealing with musculoskeletal pain to elite athletes. Kolar’s knowledge and skill set has landed him jobs with the Czech national teams in soccer, hockey, and tennis.

DNS has become highly effective in speeding recovery from injury, rehabilitate the body’s function as a unit, and enhance performance. Even the Czech President relies on his unique skill set. Kolar has worked with some of the world's best athletes, such as Jaromir Jagr, Roger Federer, and Novak Djokovic to name a few.

Thanks to the influence of these Czech clinicians, we are now able to look for predictable patterns of dysfunction within the human body and correlate them with pain or injury. It is in the Czech model we are able to piece together the clinical relevance of local, segmental joint treatments (mobilizations, manipulation), muscular imbalances, and central nervous system coordination of movement to optimize how the body functions and performs.

Read more on DNS here:

Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization: Advancing Therapy & Performance
The Hidden Causes of Sports Injury
https://gallagherperformance.com/chiropractic-rehab-dns-treatment/

https://gallagherperformance.com/sports-chiropractic-rehabilitation-massage-therapy/