Become a Physical Therapist in Sports

For anyone who knows how to work with his hands and who instinctively understands the healing needs of an injured human body part, to become a physical therapist is often a natural career possibility. And for those who wish to inject their therapist careers with a dose of excitement and glamour, turning to sports medicine and sports therapy is the natural way to go.

The part that sports plays in our lives is only becoming more important with every passing year. Just imagine – all those hundreds of sporting teams of tennis players, basketball players, boxers, hockey players and footballers – every one of those players needs a great physical therapist.

And that’s not even including the thousands of teams that haven’t made it on the national scene yet. Playing serious sports is all about pushing your body to its physical limits. When you do that, trauma and injury are only natural to encounter. How do you become a physical therapist and take advantage of this huge pent-up demand for these skills?

The first thing you need to become a physical therapist is to earn a Master’s degree in the art and science of physical therapy. If you’re planning on specializing in sports medicine, you need to go to graduate school for orthopedic therapy or sports therapy. It will be good idea to pick a school that has accreditation from the American Physical Therapy Association.

You can check APTA’s website for a list of accredited schools. If you go on further to earn a doctoral degree in sports medicine, you can count on the whole education process taking about five years at the very minimum.

A great way to train yourself in the art of sports therapy would be to volunteer at the local school or college to help with their physical therapy needs – and to do this while you’re still in school studying to become a physical therapist. You could try to enroll as an apprentice to a practicing physical therapist, too. It’ll give you a great deal of experience in how the trade works.

As with any other medical specialty, practicing physical therapy requires that you earn a license to work in your field. Every state has its own licensing requirements. You’ll need to do well in the national physical therapy examination, toon.

Here’s a little piece of insight into how physical therapy works. Have you ever seen a physical therapist at work? They have to basically hold a person’s muscles or limbs in their hands and be able to powerfully knead them for long stretches of time to be able to deliver the relief needed.

In short, physical therapy and the job of the physical therapist is only for physically powerful people. Just imagine how you would feel if you were a sports therapist and you had a heavyweight boxer on the gurney before you, for a little massage therapy to his calve muscle that looked like bowling balls. What would you do if you were a small person, physically?