above: At Oss Sports Physical Therapy, the goal is to get patients back to doing what they love and making them “stronger, faster and better.”
Smart Start
Having been drawn to all things medical from a young age, it’s no wonder that Alexandra Ranieri landed herself a career in helping people heal. As a Doctor of Physical Therapy, who is also Board Certified in Orthopedics (only 6-10% of PT’s are certified in a specialty area), the most rewarding part of what Ranieri does is “helping my patients build themselves back up from the ground and learn how to bullet-proof themselves after an injury. I teach people how to better understand their bodies and to be able to differentiate between pain and soreness. I help them figure out when to push through discomfort and when to pull back,” says Ranieri.
During lockdown so many offices stopped seeing patients, but that didn’t mean patients didn’t have pain. The number of previous patients reaching out to Ranieri directly for at-home treatments began to grow rapidly, which led her to officially set up her own shop, OSS Physical Therapy, in August 2020. This year officially marks Ranieri’s five-year anniversary of running her own private practice on Newfield Avenue in Stamford, and she continues to treat patients through in-home visits as well. Having grown by word-of-mouth and doctor referrals, Ranieri feels grateful to continue “treating people one-on-one and to be able to watch them get better, which is one of the best parts of what I do,” she says.
Why See a PT?
How would you know that it’s time to see a PT? Ranieri explains that “nagging pain that won’t go away, that disturbs you during the day or wakes you up in the middle of the night,” can often be a red flag. Nobody wants to be injured and be told that they can’t continue to do what they love. “It’s really hard to tell people they have to put a pause on what they enjoy the most, so working with a patient’s expectations and keeping them motivated on the path to healing can often be the most challenging part,” says Ranieri. “But it’s always best to see a PT during an acute flare up as opposed to waiting for things to become more chronic. In those instances, we need to deal with inflammation and calming everything down before we can focus on building strength and working toward feeling better,” she adds.
For young athletes, sometimes a PT screening is helpful in understanding the ways that the joints move and where flexibility, strength and possible weaknesses are. Based on findings, Ranieri helps to create a game plan that kids can follow at home, which can help with injury prevention during sports seasons.
A Skillset Above the Rest
Uniquely certified in ultrasound, Ranieri is able to use her in-office machine not only to diagnose injuries, but also for highly customized treatments. “Similarly to an MRI, the ultrasound allows me to see ligaments, muscles and tendons. I can see problems like rotator cuff tears and ankle sprains. If there’s a big tear, I can send what I’m seeing directly to the patient’s doctor to help expedite their recovery,” says Ranieri.
Ranieri also frequently utilizes this tool when she performs dry needling, which is a targeted technique that is used to stimulate muscle and tissue trigger points to relieve pain. The needles create lesions that help activate healing by remodeling damaged and inflamed tissue around the injection site. “There was a study done that compared dry needling to PRP (Platelet-rich plasma) injections and it found that while the results weren’t exactly the same, dry needling showed promising results that promoted and expedited healing. It’s a great device to have at my disposal, especially for larger muscles like the glutes which can be very hard to get to. With the needles I can be very specific about the areas that I’m targeting,” says Ranieri.
Mobility Matters
To help with injury prevention, Ranieri notes that mobility is key. “I love functional exercises that are easy to perform anywhere with little to no equipment and often just use your body weight. You can use socks and wood floors for leg exercises and joint circles for shoulders, hips and elbows to work on lubricating the joints to maintain proper range of motion. You can easily add ankle or wrist weights to any of these exercises to increase a strengthening component as well,” says Ranieri.
Keeping it Simple for Summer
With the rapid rise of racquet sports, most of us know someone who has been seriously injured playing tennis, pickleball or padel. When it comes to injury prevention, Ranieri expresses the importance of warming up, but not only stretching in the traditional way that most of us think of. “Plyometrics and getting the body ready for an activity is so important,” she says. “Jumping is actually one of my favorite ways to do this; you can jump on two legs or one, backwards and forwards or side to side. It’s simple, and you don’t need any equipment. This sort of movement does so much in terms of waking up your joints, muscles and ligaments,” Ranieri adds.
When she’s not treating patients, Ranieri can be found walking her rescue pup Gus at Todd’s Point or practicing Jujitsu. It was after learning that the meaning of the Japanese word often used in martial arts, “Oshi Shinobu” or “Oss” for short, is to “endure even when being pushed,” Ranieri instantly knew that she’d found the name of her new business. “I just thought that it described physical therapy perfectly. It’s all about trust, a mutual respect between a patient a doctor and a shared goal of overcoming adversity to get to the other side of pain.” For more information, visit osssportspt.com.