What's New

Granite Sports Medicine has won the 2016 Montana Women’s Business Center’s Start-Up of the Year at Prospera Business Network’s annual Business Excellence Awards. The Business Excellence Awards recognized businesses and individuals in five categories for their exceptional contributions to the region's business community. Granite Sports Medicine’s mission is to enhance health and wellness through innovative, evidence-based Physical Therapy interventions and their motto is: Physical Therapy for the active community.

Granite Sports Medicine (GSM) Founder Darcy Cook says, “Prospera’s support has been a huge part of our success since opening our doors in 2012. Six years ago, I went into the Prospera office thinking, ‘Maybe I should open a physical therapy clinic,’ and here we are now with a beautiful 4,500 square foot facility and 8 employees. It’s been an incredible growth process and Prospera held my hand throughout; from developing a business plan, to formulating financial projections, securing gap financing, to building Human Resource manuals, and how to use social media. Prospera has been integral to GSM's success and I am so honored by this recognition. I feel like I went in as a pupil and recently graduated from their fantastic ‘Business Start-up School’.”

In addition to a Master’s Degree in Physical Therapy, Cook is a Canine Rehabilitation Therapist and sees canine patients twice a week at her Black Dog Rehab clinic within Granite Sports Medicine. Learn more at http://www.granitesportsmedicine.com/livingston-physical-therapy-staff/16/Darcy-Cook-MSPT/ and www.406bdr.com

What is "needling"?

You may have heard through a friend or colleague about the relatively new modality, dry needling (DN), which is also known as Functional Dry Needling or Trigger Point Dry Needling. Typically, the response is overwhelmingly positive and people report fantastic results. It is an evidenced based technique that uses a blunt monofilament needle to release "trigger points". A trigger point is a hyperirritable spot that is painful upon compression, commonly known as muscle knots. These trigger points have characteristic referral patterns, that is, when they are compressed patients consistently feel pain in a different referred area. For example, the trigger point (X) in the neck muscle (upper trapezius) has a referral pattern that causes "tension headaches" (red area).

Historically, we have released deep muscle tension through various techniques such as massage, mobilization, stretching, postural changes, and other modalities. DN is another way to mechanically release trigger points and can be thought of as a manual therapy or massage technique. Recently, the APTA specifically adopted DN into our national practice act, recognizing it as an effective treatment choice for physical therapists.

All of the physical therapists at GSM are certified in Level 1 Dry Needling and can effectively treat spine and extremity problems. Darcy Cook, MSPT has been practicing DN since 2012and is Level 2 Certified.  In addition to the Level 1 skills, Level 2 allows her to treat more specialized disorders such as TMJ disorders (temporal mandibular joint) and tension type headaches. We are seeing great results with back or neck pain, shoulder dysfunction, lower extremity pain, headaches, etc.

The goal of DN is to resolve pain, restore motion and function, and ultimately return our patients to their active lifestyles. The combination of DN with more traditional physical therapy interventions has proven to have excellent outcomes and we have found DN to be an outstanding adjunct to our practice.

Check out our website for additional information regarding needling, or give us a call and make an appointment!

Four months out of a total shoulder replacement and already for discharge. Way to go Dave!

Brock Peterson, Jordan Lehrer, and Rydell Floyd helped us move into our new edition! Stop any time for a tour! 👍

We were proud to host our first round table discussion in our new space. We are big supporters of Montanans for Healthy Rivers. Learn more at http://healthyriversmt.org/

Chris & Hunter representing with their GSM hats! The new beanies are pretty sharp. Share your GSM hat or GSM sticker photos, and where you where sporting them, by emailing: buzzmemedia@gmail.com.