physical therapy chatham new jersey

Far and away the best PT experience I’ve had over twelve years of knee injuries and operations.

First, Dimitry’s title should be upgraded from “Doctor” to “Wizard” of PT. His ability to identify and address the biomechanical root cause of an issue is incredible and at times feels closer to witchcraft than medicine.

Second, his business/treatment model is far more effective, sustainable and ethical than traditional Physical Therapy. Every session is one-on-one and focused on correcting problems specific to each patient’s body, yielding better and faster results.

Rather than simply supervising, Dimitry educates his patients so they are able to essentially treat themselves independently, meaning fewer sessions and lower overall cost.

physical therapy bernardsville nj

What does a physical therapist do?

My practice looks very different from other PTs so I can’t really answer that for everyone.

But I can tell you what I do.

I troubleshoot movement and teach people to use strength to get out of pain, return post-op/postpartum, and optimize performance.

In other words, I assess what your body can and can’t do and help you retrain it to have more strength in more positions.

I typically do this through fundamental movements—breath, core, hip hinges, squats, push, and pull, but occasionally apply some fancy tricks I’ve picked up along the way which aren’t really fancy, they’re just more basics, done well.

I specialize in the fundamentals of movement and I teach people how to use them for their own benefit. #movehealchange

Posture Physical TherapyPosture Physical Therapy

Chest out & Shoulder Back! Some of our clients tell us that this is what they were told as a strategy for good standing posture. The main problem is that they were told this 30-40 years ago. Yet I still have clients come in & stand exactly like that day in and day out🙄

Chances are there are better cues for good standing posture in 2019 – better than this guy! Note how most of his body is in front of the plum line. That means that he has a forward weight shift. That places excessive strain/load through the toes, meaning that his toe flexors, calves, quads and back muscles are going to have to work much harder to keep him upright.

This creates an excessive lumbar curve and that has many implications, the biggest of which is down-regulating abdominal tension, increased compression of the lumbar spine, increased tone of the back muscles & restricted ability to breathe (specifically exhalation!) That creates a necessity to flare the anterior rib-cage which leads to apical breathing patterns and excessive engagement of neck muscles – cue neck pain 😭!

Ideally the plum line should split this guy in 1/2 (front to back.) Then his center of mass is exactly that – centered. That means his abs and glutei are on & his calves/quads & back muscles are not overloaded when standing. Ribs are down allowing him to exhale better 💨 – which allow him to inhale better into the posterior thorax! 💥 Easier said than done.

But we do that here at Total-PT! Better yet, we find out the reasons for why people default to standing this way & give them really great software upgrades. So it’s very 2019! #movehealchange

Summit Bernardsville Bridgewater Physical Therapy

Dimitry is hands down amazing. My back went out in 2012 while I was teaching one of my cardio classes at the gym. I could barely move. An MRI showed a bulged disc. The Dr just gave me a bunch of muscle relaxers that did not fix the problem. I had foot drop on my left side and lost a lot of strength in that leg.

Dimitry was recommended by friends and in one session after an evaluation, some muscle palpation, and prescribed exercises my body was more in balance and I was feeling much better. In one week I had 90% of the strength back in my left leg.

To this day if my back feels a little funny I do Dimitry’s homework and I’m right back to normal.
I recently sent my father to him for lower back pain as well and he is thrilled, feeling much better, and calling Dimitry a miracle worker.