Leading Edge Physiotherapy and major sports teams will soon have something in common – a private pool.
Not your typical splash-and-fun pool, though – this pool offers a high-tech approach to treating injuries.
The Swimex pool allows for aquatic therapy (hydrotherapy), which can help to reduce joint and soft-tissue swelling, and to strengthen muscles before and after surgery.
Leading Edge president and co-owner Grant Fedoruk said the pool is the first of its kind in a private clinic in Canada.
When submerged in water, a patient’s weight is reduced, allowing him to exercise without the pain and forces present in land-based programs.
The pool will help his team get patients active far sooner following an injury than through normal physiotherapy, he said.
“We want them to be active and we want them to keep up the muscle function but we can’t do it on land because it’s so painful.”
“We can have them in our pool actively doing exercises with less pain on their joints.”
The pool is able to produce water currents to simulate swimming at different speeds. It is also temperature controlled and allows for high-pressure therapeutic massage.
Beside injury treatment, the pool aids with exercises for arthritis patients, treating lower back and neck pains, as well as orthopedic conditions such as joint replacements and reconstructions.
Fedoruk said a lot of professional athletes use swimming pools for rehabilitation, often sharing them with recreational swimmers.
“Our clinic here, we are in a facility that has a pool and it’s one-on-one care where I am standing right there and can go back and forth with my patients,” he said.
With their lease running out, Fedoruk said Leading Edge decided to jump ahead on future plans and double their current space.
Come January, they will move from their former present location at Sturgeon Valley Athletic Club to the new, 4200 square foot Sports Performance Centre III in Campbell Business Park.
Fedoruk said the physiotherapy clinic would employ new physiotherapists to work specifically with patients at the pool.
Patients can also look forward to a larger space for work-related rehabilitation, private treatment rooms and treatments for patients suffering from dizziness and imbalance disorder.
“We are excited about this. We were planning to do this for the past two or three years and we were waiting until we had the right place and space to do it,” he said, adding they had originally intended to build a satellite clinic to house the pool.
“This is what we’ve been working toward, having our own front door and our own space designed for us rather then making due in the space we had in the past.”
