PT Terminology, Without the Medical-School Degree

Ever leave a healthcare appointment thinking, “I’m pretty sure those were English words…”?

We get it.

Physical therapists spend a lot of time talking about things like fascia, proprioception, dorsiflexion, radiculopathy, and the ever-popular SI joint. And while we try our best to explain everything as we go, sometimes it helps to have a place to look it up later.

Welcome to our PT Terminology Guide, where we translate physical therapy, orthopedic, and anatomy terms into regular human language.

No medical degree required.

Knee Talk

ACL

The famous one.

The Anterior Cruciate Ligament is one of the major ligaments inside your knee. It helps keep your knee stable, especially during twisting, pivoting, and quick changes of direction. You’ve probably heard about ACL tears in sports, but athletes aren’t the only people who can injure one.

Meniscus

Your knee’s built-in shock absorber.

Each knee has two C-shaped pieces of cartilage called menisci. They help cushion the joint and distribute pressure between your thigh bone and shin bone.

Patella

Fancy word for kneecap.

That’s it. Your patella is your kneecap. See? You’re already speaking PT.

Knee Effusion

There’s extra fluid hanging out in your knee.

An effusion means fluid has accumulated inside or around the joint. You may notice swelling, stiffness, or that lovely feeling that your knee suddenly belongs to someone else.

Quadriceps

The big muscles on the front of your thigh.

Your “quads” are actually a group of four muscles. They help straighten your knee and are important for walking, stairs, standing up from a chair, running, jumping, and a whole lot more.

Hip & Pelvis Talk

Glutes

Yes, we’re talking about your butt. Professionally.

Your gluteal muscles are a powerful group of muscles around the back and sides of your hips. They help with walking, climbing stairs, balance, hip stability, and much more.

Hip Flexors

The muscles that help bring your leg toward your body.

They work every time you walk, climb stairs, or lift your knee. If you’ve ever been told you have “tight hip flexors,” these are the guys everyone is talking about.

SI Joint

Small joint. Surprisingly big personality.

Your sacroiliac joints connect the bottom of your spine (sacrum) to your pelvis. You have one on each side. They don’t move very much, but irritation around this area can contribute to pain in the lower back, buttock, or pelvic region.

Hip Labrum

A cartilage rim that helps your hip joint do its job.

The hip labrum is a ring of firm cartilage around the rim of your hip socket. It helps keep the joint stable. A tear in that rim is called a hip labral tear. Your shoulder has a labrum, too.

Shoulder Talk

Rotator Cuff

Not actually one thing.

Your rotator cuff is a group of four muscles and their tendons that help move and stabilize your shoulder. So when someone says they “hurt their rotator cuff,” there are actually several structures that could be involved.

Scapula

Your shoulder blade.

The scapula plays a huge role in how your shoulder moves. Your PT may spend more time talking about your shoulder blade than you expected when you came in because your shoulder hurts. There’s a reason for that.

Frozen Shoulder

Unfortunately, no ice is involved.

Also called adhesive capsulitis, frozen shoulder causes increasing stiffness and pain in the shoulder and can make everyday movements — like reaching overhead or behind your back — surprisingly difficult.

Shoulder Labrum

Your shoulder has a cartilage rim, too.

The shoulder labrum is a ring of firm cartilage around the rim of your shoulder socket. It helps keep the joint stable. A tear in that rim is called a shoulder labral tear.

Pelvic Floor Talk

Pelvic Floor

Yep, everybody has one.

The pelvic floor is a group of muscles at the bottom of your pelvis. These muscles help support your bladder, bowel, and reproductive organs and contribute to bladder and bowel control, sexual function, and core stability.

Pelvic Floor Dysfunction

When the pelvic floor isn’t quite working as a team.

Pelvic floor muscles can be too weak, too tight, poorly coordinated, or some combination of the above. That can contribute to leaking, urgency, constipation, pelvic pain, pressure, or other symptoms.

Stress Incontinence

When a sneeze becomes a calculated risk.

This is urine leakage associated with increased pressure — such as coughing, sneezing, laughing, jumping, or exercising. It’s common, but that doesn’t mean you simply have to live with it.

Kegel

The pelvic floor exercise everybody has heard about, but isn’t right for everybody.

A Kegel is a pelvic floor muscle contraction. Strengthening can be helpful for some people, but others actually need to learn how to relax or coordinate these muscles instead. That’s one reason pelvic floor Physical Therapy isn’t simply “do more Kegels.”

General PT Speak

Range of Motion

How far a joint can move.

You’ll often hear this shortened to ROM. Your therapist may measure it to see how much movement you currently have and track how that changes during treatment.

Gait

How you walk.

“Gait training” sounds considerably more dramatic than “we’re working on how you walk,” but that’s essentially what we’re talking about.

Proprioception

Your body’s internal GPS.

It’s your ability to sense where your body is in space without looking. Close your eyes and touch your nose. You can thank proprioception for helping you find it.

Compensation

When your body gets creative.

If one area isn’t moving or working well, another area may change how it moves to get the job done. Sometimes that’s useful temporarily. Sometimes it creates another problem for your PT to investigate.

Manual Therapy

This is the hands-on part.

Manual therapy includes techniques performed by your therapist using their hands to help address joint mobility, soft tissue restrictions, pain, and movement.

Therapeutic Exercise

Exercise with a job to do.

These aren’t random exercises pulled from the internet. They’re selected to address specific things such as strength, mobility, endurance, balance, or movement patterns.

Neuromuscular Re-education

A very complicated name for teaching your brain and body to work together better.

These activities help improve things like balance, coordination, posture, movement patterns, and muscle activation.

One Last Thing

You don’t need to know all of this.

That’s our job.

But we believe understanding what’s happening in your body can make the rehabilitation process a little less intimidating, and a lot more empowering.

So if your Physical Therapist says something that sounds like it belongs on a medical-school exam, ask us. We love questions.

And if you forget what it meant by the time you get home?

That’s what this page is for.