Leipzig, July 3, 2014
More than 80 patients and athletes use the sling trainer daily at Physiotherapy Petzold in Leipzig
It does look a little unusual when the patients at the Petzold physiotherapy practice in Leipzig lean on the wide slings hanging from the ceiling and perform slow movements in them. Physiotherapist Daniel Förster has been using sling training here for around ten years. "In many cases, I wouldn't know what better thing I could offer patients," he says. He finds it to be the right device, especially for shoulder problems and after shoulder operations, to help him restore muscle development and coordination with the help of medical training therapy. An important additional effect is the body stabilization provided by the deliberately unstable training device. "At first, sling training often meets with reservations. But once they get used to it, most people don't want to give it up."
Sling training is used in Leipzig physiotherapy not only for therapeutic purposes, but also for competitive sports. The athletes from the Leipzig Olympic swimming training center come regularly to complete additional training. The original idea of national coach Dirk Franke was to increase the general resilience of the competitors during swimming training. But Förster is certain that sling training not only has this additional effect, but also has a direct impact on swimming performance: "Almost all athletes are currently swimming their personal best times." The fin swimmers ("finswimming") at the Leipzig Olympic training center have also discovered the advantages of additional training with the sling trainer. National coach Lutz Riemann is very satisfied with the results.
The physiotherapy department currently has nine REHAPE sling trainers in use. All of them are used extensively. Between 40 and 80 patients and athletes train with the equipment every day. Förster: "The slings are some of our most efficient training equipment." He likes the universal applicability of the sling trainer: "It invites you to think up a new exercise every day." The exercises can be tailored very precisely to each muscle group and to practically any level of exertion. "This means that anyone can train, from children to 80-year-olds, from rehabilitation patients to competitive athletes." He also sees the small space requirement as a major advantage. He can have several patients train at the same time with his sling trainers, or he can think up his own exercises in which they use four slings at the same time.
Daniel Förster first got to know the sling trainer in 2004 at a training course for physiotherapists offered by the Norwegian Vidar Vindal. In 2007, he expanded his knowledge at a seminar given by Hannspeter Meier. Together with the AMS Academy in Munich, he introduced sling training in Germany as part of the REHAPE training and therapy system. Förster: "I think the ideas behind it are good and, above all, they have been tried and tested in practice. Many people today are no longer aware that the REHAPE inventors were the pioneers of sling training in Germany!"
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