Redcord will help you move better and speed up your return to optimal function.
When clients walk into our clinic, they often ask us, “What are those red cords and straps hanging from the ceiling?” They may look a little scary, but the system hanging from our ceiling is called Redcord.
What is Redcord?
Redcord is a unique treatment approach that uses one’s own body weight to restore proper neuromuscular control and functional stability for daily activities and sports. What makes it special is that you exercise while suspended from “red cords” that hang from the ceiling. These cords consist of a series of bungees, slings, handles and ropes suspended over a treatment table.
By adjusting the degree of support or challenge in the bungee system, your physical therapist can target specific muscle groups in the right order to facilitate neuromuscular control and eliminate compensatory patterns and pain. This approach speeds up treatment time and return to function much faster than traditional physical therapy methods.
At Functionize, we use the Redcord Neurac Method. This Method is specific to physical therapy. It is an advanced curriculum designed for physical therapists that assists in moving a client of all levels from pain and dysfunction toward optimal performance and function.
Why does Redcord work?
When we get injured, have pain, or become less active, our body develops compensatory patterns of movement and muscle engagement. These patterns can persist for months, years, or a lifetime even when the initial injury is resolved. This disturbs our brain’s capacity to switch on the right muscles at the right time and with the right amount of strength. This loss of neuromuscular function diminishes our “local” core muscle control, often leading to poor movement patterns, joint stiffness, increased pain, and impaired sports performance.
Instead, our larger “global” muscles compensate and eventually become stressed, strained and painful leading to further injury. Redcord Neurac reverses this compensatory pattern. The Redcord system stimulates the correct muscles in the proper sequencing so the smaller core muscle can start working again and appropriate movement patterns can be restored.
For example, let’s look at the “glute muscles” or the muscles in our hips and buttock region. These muscles are important for walking, running, balance, and pelvic stability. Oftentimes clients will complain of low back, hip or knee pain that may actually be coming from poor glute activation during daily activities and sports. This happens for several reasons—postural and movement habits, injury, and sedentary lifestyles, to name a few.
Our clients may report that their hamstrings cramp when they do a bridge exercise, they have back pain when doing side planks, their knees are painful when squatting, or they cannot balance on one leg. These problems may emerge when clients cannot properly engage their glutes during exercise. In this scenario, we can utilize the Redcord to “turn on” the glutes appropriately and before long, all the exercises that were originally painful or difficult become fluid and easy because the client can now use their glutes.
Over a few sessions of Redcord, the brain can now send the normal signals to the muscle and the muscle can respond because the neuromuscular connection is reinforced. This leads to better movement patterns, improved strength, enhanced exercise performance and less pain during daily activities.
Learn how using Redcord can speed up your recovery and get you back to moving, feeling, and doing all the things you love with less pain.
Thanks for reading,
-Lauren Sok, Physical Therapist
Lauren Sok, Founder of Functionize Health & Physical Therapy, brings 18 years of physical therapy practice and expertise in treating orthopedic and sports medicine related injuries. She incorporates a functional medicine approach in treating the whole person to find the root cause of a problem, rather than treating one body part at a time. Lauren holds a Master of Physical Therapy and Bachelor of Science in Health Science from the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia. She is a Certified Stott Pilates Instructor, a Clinical Instructor at the Doctorate of Physical Therapy Program, Emory University, and is trained in Redcord Neurac and Trigger Point Dry Needling. Lauren’s email is lauren@functionizehealth.com. More information can be found at www.functionizehealth.com.
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