STADS Specialisations

Manual therapists love joints! An additional study of 3 or 4 years after the physiotherapy bachelor, makes STADS’ manual therapists the specialists in the treatment of areas such as neck pain, back pain and shoulder pain. Using specific manipulations they can directly reduce pain or improve joint mobility. 

Sometimes complaints are more complex or can’t be explained at all. These complaints are called medically unexplained physical symptoms (MUPS) and are at least as annoying and painful as complaints with a clear cause! Your emotions, environment, thoughts and behavior all play an important role in the way these complaints are perceived. This largely takes place in your ”Psyche”. However, the complaints also manifest themselves physically, also called ”somatic”. Think of headaches, fatigue, dizziness, hyperventilation or heart palpations.

STADS’ psychosomatic physiotherapists help you to gain insight into the cause of the complaints and factors that perpetuate them. By becoming more aware of the influence you can have on your psyche, by relaxing and making adjustments, step by step you’ll regain control over your body.

Sports and exercise are super important! They do not only improve your fitness and strength, but also contribute to a healthy lifestyle, a good night’s sleep and reduce the risk of all kinds of annoying diseases.

STADS’ sport physiotherapists will help you if an injury prevents you from exercising as you’d like. Every injury requires tailored rehabilitation plan to get you back on the sport pitch, the skiing slopes, in the swimming pool, the fitness center or at home on your exercise bike as quickly as possible.

”With old ages comes wisdom”. True hopefully, but unfortunately flaws also come with old age. Although this applies to everyone, there are people who suffer more from aging than others. 

STADS’ geriatric physiotherapist help you with their specific knowledge about age-related diseases, fall risk and complaints as a result of for example a stroke, Parkinson’s or Multiple Sclerosis (MS) to remain as independent and self-sufficient as possible.

Did you know that, after the common cold, headaches are the most frequently mentioned complaint in doctor’s visits? We all suffer from it occasionally and luckily it usually goes away on its own. However, some types of headaches can last for a long time and hinder you in your work, study, sports or social activities. Then there are also a lot of different types of headache, with different causes, or sometimes even without a clear cause at all. In short, a big puzzle. 

STADS’ physiotherapist are happy to puzzle along with you! With an extensive screening, we first try to rule out that the headache is a result of another health problem. Then we will work with you to see whether and how the complaints can be alleviated or even remedied. For example, manual therapy can offer a solution for tension type headaches, cervicogenic headaches and some forms of migraine.

‘’Peripheral arterial disease’’. A mouth full. What it comes down to is less complicated. Namely, pain in your legs due to a reduced blood flow to the muscle tissue. Because of the pain you can’t  walk as long anymore and you have to stop more often to reduce the pain.

Vascular training through walking exercises helps to create new blood vessels in the legs. This allows you to walk a little further every time. The treatment consists of a period in which you will train intensively under the supervision of one of STADS’ physiotherapists. After this, you’ll stay in touch for a few months to measure the effect of the training.

Breathing, without thinking we do it 10-20 times a minute. The most common thing in the world you’d say. Still, plenty can go wrong with potentially very unpleasant consequences.

STADS’ physiotherapists specialize in the treatment of complaints arising from, for example, COPD, ASTHMA, Covid-19 or hyperventilation. They can supervise you in training, respiratory exercises or lifestyle changes.

We all know physical activity is important if you want to stay healthy and energetic. But how do you start getting in shape? How do you prevent that persistent injury from disrupting your goals again? What should you take in account if you are recovering from a medical procedure, illness or accident? In short, sometimes it is nice to get some help with this.

At STADS you can exercise in a medical setting. You have the option to train independently or under the guidance of a specialized therapist. We help you to exercise responsibly and work on your physical goals or recovery.

Children are not small adults. They grow, and while they grow their movement keeps changing — which is exactly why something can get stuck along the way. A baby with a flat spot or a strong head preference, a toddler who is slower to walk than others, a schoolchild who writes with difficulty or keeps tripping over their own feet.

STADS’ paediatric physiotherapists are trained to see the difference between a normal variation and something that needs help. Treatment looks like play, because that is how children learn best. Parents are part of it: you get exercises and advice you can use at home, in the situations where the difficulty actually shows up.

Some people bounce back from COVID in a week. Others are still tired months later, lose strength and find that a flight of stairs suddenly costs them everything.

The tricky part is that pushing harder often makes it worse. Recovery here is not about training through it, but about finding the level your body can handle and building from there in small, controlled steps. We look at your breathing, your condition and your daily energy, and we teach you to recognise your own limits before you go past them. Slower than you would like, but it holds.

MS affects everyone differently, and it can differ from month to month in the same person. Fatigue, loss of strength, balance problems, or a leg that no longer does what you ask of it.

Our MS therapists know the condition and, just as importantly, know how to train without overstepping. Too much effort can set you back for days, so the art is in the dosage. We work on strength, walking and balance, and on keeping you doing the things that matter to you for as long as possible. We stay in touch with your neurologist and MS nurse.

Roughly one in three people over 65 falls at least once a year, and a fall often changes more than a bruise: many people start avoiding things afterwards, move less, and become less steady still.

That circle can be broken, and it is easier than most people think. Balance and strength turn out to be very trainable, even at an advanced age. In our fall prevention training we work on both, and we look at the practical side too: your footwear, your medication, loose rugs and poor lighting at home. The goal is simple — that you stay on your feet, and dare to keep going.

Oedema is fluid that builds up in your tissue, most often in an arm or a leg. It can appear after surgery, after radiotherapy, after removal of lymph nodes, or because your lymphatic system is not draining well on its own. The limb feels heavy, tight and swollen.

Our oedema therapists help the fluid on its way with manual lymph drainage, compression and exercise, and teach you how to keep it under control yourself. Oedema often needs long-term management rather than a one-off fix, so we make sure you understand what you are doing and why.

Some tendon complaints simply refuse to go away. A stubborn tennis elbow, a heel that hurts with every first step in the morning, a shoulder that has been complaining for months despite doing all your exercises.

Shockwave therapy uses pressure waves delivered through the skin to the painful area. It stimulates blood flow and the body’s own repair response in tissue that had rather given up. It is not a replacement for exercise — it works best alongside a training programme. We use it when the usual route has not been enough, and we will tell you honestly if we do not expect it to help you.

Most hands-on techniques are done while you lie still. Mulligan’s therapy works the other way round: the therapist applies a gentle correction to the joint while you make the movement that normally hurts.

If the technique is right, the pain is noticeably less straight away — and that immediate feedback is exactly the point. It tells us we are in the right place, and it shows you that the movement is possible after all. It is often used for the neck, shoulder, elbow, knee and ankle, and is usually combined with exercises so the improvement holds once you leave.