Physical Therapy Clinic Equipment

New and Pre-Owned Rehab Equipment, Clinic Layouts and Installation for Outpatient Therapy

A therapy gym is a treatment room with equipment in it. Every machine has to start lighter than a commercial gym would ever need, adjust for a patient who cannot adjust it alone, and leave room for a therapist to stand beside it — and the whole gym usually has to fit inside a leased suite between the treatment tables and the front desk.

What a physical therapy clinic runs on

Most outpatient therapy gyms are built around the same short list. A seated total-body recumbent stepper — NuStep, SciFit or Spirit — does more of the work than anything else in the room, because a patient who cannot yet stand to exercise can still work arms and legs together from a seat they swivel into. An upper body ergometer carries the shoulder and upper-extremity caseload, and the clinical models take a wheelchair in place of the seat. A rehab treadmill starts at a walking pace slower than any club treadmill, runs in reverse, and carries full-length handrails a patient can hold the whole way. Around those sit recumbent and upright bikes, a cable column or dual cable cross, a few strength machines that start at a few pounds, and the balance, suspension and functional tools the treatment plan calls for.

The strength side is where a clinic differs most from a gym. A selectorized stack that starts at 10 or 15 lb and climbs in 10 lb plates is beyond an early post-surgical patient, so clinics lean on machines that start light and increment finely: pneumatic Keiser resistance, which moves in small steps from close to zero, cable columns with fractional add-on weights, and incline body-weight trainers that load a fraction of the patient's own weight.

Occupational therapy

An OT gym trains function — reaching, lifting, carrying, gripping, transferring — so its fitness equipment is chosen for the upper body and for tasks that look like a working day: an upper body ergometer, a cable column set at every height a patient reaches to, wall bars, light dumbbells and weighted balls, and an open area for lifting from floor to shelf. We supply that exercise equipment and draw the gym around the rest of the OT room; the fine-motor, hand-therapy and daily-living tools come from the therapy supply houses that specialize in them, and we leave space for them on the plan.

Sports medicine and return to sport

A sports-medicine practice treats the athlete as well as the injury, and the last weeks of a return-to-sport program look like a training floor: a rack and platform, a turf lane for sleds and change of direction, plyo boxes, a cable cross, pneumatic machines for power at speed, and conditioning cardio. That is the same specification as our athletic weight rooms, scaled to a clinic, and it sits beside the recumbent and upper-body equipment the early phases need.

Chiropractic and active care

Chiropractic practices that add an active-care or rehab room usually have the least space of all. A recumbent stepper, a cable column, suspension straps on a wall mount, a BOSU, a Power Plate vibration platform and a stretch trainer fit a single room, and the same layout rules apply: room to transfer, room to coach, and nothing a patient has to climb over.

New or pre-owned, piece by piece

Therapy clinics are the buyers who gain most from pre-owned equipment, because the pieces they use hardest are the ones that are built to be rebuilt. A recumbent stepper, a recumbent bike or a cable column coming out of a hospital or club refresh, rebuilt properly, does the same job as a new one. Every pre-owned machine goes through our own Texas shop to a written 20-point inspection and leaves in one of two conditions — Cleaned & Serviced, with a 30-day parts-and-labor warranty, or Remanufactured, repainted with its worn components replaced and a 90-day warranty. Most clinics buy a mix: the physical therapy clinic in Carefree, Arizona, opened with a pre-owned dual cable cross, elliptical and recumbent bike, each Cleaned & Serviced, alongside new wall bars, a BOSU, plyo boxes and dumbbells. Life Fitness, Precor and Cybex are lines we supply pre-owned only, and the quote says so. New, refurbished or remanufactured explains the difference; our sister company Discount Online Fitness lists the certified pre-owned range online, and a clinic replacing equipment can trade in what it has.