Sports Medicine in NYC

About NYDN Sports Medicine and Injury Rehab

Athletic injuries can be career-ending if they are not properly treated and rehabilitated. For athletes who want to return to play after an injury, a competent and experienced sports medicine team is critical to ensuring full recovery. In addition, preventative analysis and retraining can help boost your performance while dramatically reducing your injury risk.

Dr. Lev Kalika

Clinical director & DC RMSK

About New York Sports Medicine
Specialist Dr. Lev Kalika

Dr. Kalika, clinical director of NYDNRehab, has dedicated his career to revolutionizing the way injury, pain and dysfunction are treated. He has trained under some of the world’s greatest human movement scientists, and collaborated on research that has made invaluable contributions to our understanding of how the human body heals.

Dr. Kalika is certified in musculoskeletal ultrasonography, extracorporeal shockwave therapy (ESWT), dry needling, Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization (DNS) and more. He works with elite athletes, runners and ballet dancers, along with everyday patients who want to move without pain, for a better quality of life.

NYDNRehab is a best-rated NYC sports medicine clinic located in Midtown Manhattan. The clinic features some of the most advanced technologies for sports performance training and rehab in NYC.

Our Awards

Why You Should Trust NYDNRehab for
Sports Injury Rehab

At NYDNRehab, we believe that serious athletes should be taken seriously, and given every opportunity to return safely to play. Our personalized one-on-one approach ensures that our athletes get case-specific treatment for their injuries, including feedback retraining that restores the brain-body connection.

The clinic at NYDNRehab is equipped with the most advanced research-grade technologies for diagnosis, assessment and rehabilitation of sports injuries, Our extensive range of equipment for diagnosis and treatment is rarely found in a private clinical setting.

Our sports performance lab is designed to accurately quantify motor deficits that are invisible to the naked eye. We monitor your progress, step-by-step, to gather objective data that guarantees results.

We never return our athletes to the playing field based on timelines or cookie-cutter rehab protocols. If you want personalized treatment that restores full function and optimizes performance while reducing your risk of injury, you will get the very best sports medicine in NYC at NYDNRehab.

Athletic Injuries We Treat

Concussions and TBI
Cervical spinal injuries
Shoulder and rotator cuff injuries
Arm, wrist and elbow injuries
Thoracic and rib cage injuries
Lower back injuries
Hip and pelvic injuries
Knee ACL, MCL and meniscus injuries
Hamstring injuries
Achilles tendon injuries
Injuries to the feet and ankles
All other categories of athletic injuries

Restoring Mechanical Integrity is Key to
Performance Recovery

The integrity of your body’s structures and their capacity to align and interact at optimal levels is dependent on tension generated from your muscles and fascia. Your skeleton provides a structural framework for your entire organism, but without tension produced by muscles and fascia pulling against rigid bones, you would collapse in a motionless heap.

However, tension generated by soft tissues is not enough to achieve optimal movement integrity — myofascial tension must be tuned and balanced by strong and elastic tissues that glide freely among other structures. When the capacity of muscles and fascia to stretch, contract and glide is impeded, imbalances arise that undermine movement mechanics, causing pain and dysfunction.

Restoring Mechanical Integrity is Key to Performance Recovery

Tensegrity describes a state of optimal mechanical function, where joints are perfectly aligned and move freely through their functional range of motion, while at the same time being stabilized and supported by tension generated from healthy myofascial tissue. Compression is the enemy of tensegrity, preventing interdependent tissues, organs and structures from moving and gliding in harmony.

Loss of tensegrity, aka dystensegrity, is mostly mechanical in nature – the myofascial network is designed to mediate load transfer and distribute force loads among muscles, ligaments, bones and viscera during physical activity. However, unhealthy cells from poor nutrition, inadequate hydration, prescription drugs and environmental toxins can also undermine myofascial tensegrity.

Myofascial tensegrity cannot be accurately assessed via a clinical exam, or with X-ray or MRI. Only diagnostic ultrasonography can give us real-time imaging of the myofascia in motion, in real time. Ultrasound lets us detect and measure fascia densifications and adhesions that contribute to dystensegrity. Sonoelastography gives us capabilities for measuring tension within myofascial tissues.

Physical activity is essential to achieving and sustaining balanced myofascial tension, and athletes and physically active people rely on tensegrity for peak performance.

But physical training alone is not enough to achieve tensegrity.

Healthy myofascia depends on a number of factors, including:

Full-spectrum nutrition that provides building blocks for healthy tissues.
Adequate hydration – the myofascia and visceral organs require water for optimal health.
Hormonal balance — hormones are chemical messengers that play a crucial role in governing muscle integrity. For example, a poorly functioning thyroid can impact the tensegrity of your connective tissues.
Healthy gut microbiome — your gut is often referred to as your second brain, affecting the absorption of vital nutrients and impacting the function of your autonomic nervous system. An unhealthy gut may also host harmful parasites that cause a broad range of diseases, including cancers.
Spiritual wellbeing — all life is connected, and all living entities strive to achieve balance within their respective ecosystems, and in harmony with other beings. When you are angry, tense, anxious or stressed, you internalize pressure that manifests as physical pain and dysfunction. Internalized stress affects the cells’ capacity for intracellular and extracellular ion exchange that fosters the electrical balance of cells and enables tissue healing.

Aging and harmful lifestyle behaviors profoundly impact tensegrity.

Reduced physical activity and loss of lean muscle tissue (sarcopenia) cause the metabolism to slow and systems to malfunction.
Reduced blood volume and diminished blood perfusion restrict the delivery of oxygen and nutrients to cells.
Nutrient deficiencies limit your capacity for tissue repair and regeneration.
Pharmaceuticals alter your body chemistry and affect tissues in myriad ways that impede tensegrity. For example, statin drugs prescribed to control cholesterol have neuromuscular adverse effects that include cramps, myalgia, weakness, immune-mediated necrotizing myopathy, and rhabdomyolysis.
Systemic inflammation arises from stress, poor nutrition, physical inactivity and inadequate sleep, undermining cellular function and creating metabolic disorders.
Environmental toxins from air, water, processed foods, household and institutional cleaning solutions, and personal grooming products wreak havoc throughout your brain and body, potentially causing cancers and neurodegenerative diseases.

At NYDNRehab, we treat the whole patient, not just their symptoms. When the body is in an unhealthy state, tissue healing is impeded, and physical therapy can only achieve suboptimal results. For athletic populations, addressing all the factors that undermine tensegrity is essential for injury rehabilitation and restoring peak performance.

Our holistic and personalized approach to patient care addresses the many issues that undermine tensegrity. Our high-resolution diagnostic ultrasound equipment gives us crystal-clear images of your myofascia in motion. Our regenerative technologies provide us with the tools we need to restore baseline health, so we can effectively treat your injuries, pain and dysfunction, and restore fluid pain-free movement.

Our Performance
Enhancement Lab

Elite athletes know the value of injury prevention and take proactive measures to achieve peak performance. Our performance enhancement lab uses advanced technologies to precisely measure performance parameters, including:

Joint kinematics analysis
Force load assessment
Motor symmetry analysis
Muscle firing patterns
Strength and power assessment
3D running gait analysis
Skills execution analysis
AI and VR biofeedback retraining

Top-performing athletes visit our clinic for regular tune-ups, to stay at the top of their game. By optimizing your performance, you broaden and maintain your competitive edge while dramatically reducing your risk of injury.

Accurate and Thorough Diagnosis is Key to Full Recovery

Sports injuries are often painted with a broad brush, and conventional medicine tends to treat the locus of injury without looking at the whole picture. At NYDNRehab, we know that an injury in one part of the body affects the mechanics of the entire body, and peripheral damage needs to be addressed before an athlete is ready to return to sport.

We use the highest resolution diagnostic ultrasound to view your injury in real time, with the affected area in motion. Ultrasound enables us to see how your injury affects muscles, tendons, bones, nerves and fascia in the surrounding area. It also gives us the capacity to evaluate your tissues using sonoelastography and superior microvascular imaging, to ensure that healing is taking place.

As your tissues heal, we measure your progress and evaluate your motor patterns using the latest technologies. We pull out all the stops to restore the neural pathways between your brain and your muscles, leveraging AI and VR to perfect your motor skills.

Our research-grade motion analysis technology and high resolution diagnostic ultrasonography help us to accurately detect motor deviations that are invisible to the naked eye. Our personalized treatment plans are data-driven. We quantify your progress step-by-step, until your goals are reached and you are ready to return to sport with confidence.

Accurate and Thorough Diagnosis is Key to Full Recovery

Our State-of-the-Art Treatment Toolbox

The sports medicine clinic at NYDNRehab features some of the most advanced technologies for injury rehabilitation in the world. Much of our research grade equipment cannot be found in other private clinics. NYDNRehab’s sports medicine team leverages technology to provide our patients with the best evidence-based therapeutic treatment options.

Blood Flow Restriction Therapy (BFRT)

This groundbreaking technology allows us to speed up tissue healing and rapidly restore muscle strength after an injury, without overloading damaged tissues and structures. Get back to your favorite sport or activity, faster and with reduced risk of re-injury with BFRT.

Proteus Collinear Resistance Training

An important part of injury rehab is retraining and strengthening the muscles in ways that replicate sports skills execution. Proteus lets our patients train using natural motor patterns, in all 3 planes of motion, to restore and optimize peak performance.

State-of-the-art Motion Analysis Lab

Even the fiercest athletes need a tune-up from time to time, to restore muscle balance and joint alignment, and eliminate bad habits that can cause injury. From 3D running gait analysis and retraining to biomechanical analysis and skills retraining, we quantify every movement to help you find your best form.

Computer Assisted Rehabilitation Environment (C.A.R.E.N)

You will not find this multifaceted system in other NY sports medicine clinics. C.A.R.E.N equips us with a high-tech environment for precisely measuring joint kinematics, muscle firing patterns, balance and weight distribution, and the minutest motor deficits that can hurt performance and cause injury. C.A.R.E.N’s virtual reality feedback environment helps restore optimal movement for peak athletic performance and reduced injury risk.

Our Regenerative Technologies Speed
Healing

The human body has its own innate healing mechanisms, but it sometimes needs a nudge to accelerate the healing process. Regenerative technologies help to jump-start healing by stimulating tissue repair at the cellular level. Our outpatient regenerative therapies expedite recovery with minimal discomfort for the patient.

Focused Shockwave Therapy

Focused Extracorporeal Shock Wave Therapy (ESWT)

Focused ESWT is used as a regenerative treatment for damaged tendon, muscle and bone tissue. This technology produces high frequency sound waves to stimulate the body’s own reparative mechanisms. It is especially effective for chronic degenerative tendon disorders and myofascial pain syndrome.

Extracorporeal Magnetic Transduction Therapy (EMTT)

EMTT is a fairly new technology that transmits high energy magnetic pulses to targeted tissues. The magnetic waves synchronize with the body’s own magnetic fields, causing a disturbance that triggers a regenerative response. EMTT waves can penetrate deep tissues up to 18 cm beneath the skin’s surface, to target difficult-to-reach tendons, muscles, bones and nerves.

Electromagnetic Transduction Therapy (EMTT)

Extracorporeal Pulse Activation Technology (EPAT)

EPAT, also known as defocused shock wave therapy, uses acoustic pressure waves to enhance blood circulation to targeted tissues. This speeds up the delivery of oxygen and nutrients to damaged tissues and stimulates cellular metabolism, to accelerate the healing process.

High Energy Inductive Therapy (HEIT)

HEIT uses electromagnetic fields to penetrate cells, tissues, organs and bones, to reactivate the electrochemical function of cells and cell membranes. HEIT generates a magnetic field 600 times stronger than the field of a normal magnet, to stimulate healing of nerves, muscles and blood vessels.

HIGH ENERGY INDUCTIVE THERAPY (HEIT)

INDIBA CT9 Radiofrequency Device

Our INDIBA Tecar therapy machine converts electrical current into a stable radio frequency current of 448 kHz, designed to increase and stabilize the exchange of ions in damaged cells, evoking a regenerative response that accelerates healing. INDIBA can be used to successfully treat joint and muscle disorders, low-back pain, sports injuries, surgical incisions and various pain syndromes. Another therapeutic effect of INDIBA is extreme and prolonged cellular hyperthermia. Due to this effect, INDIBA therapy combined with manual therapy and soft tissue tissue manipulation enables instantaneous release to occur, significantly shortening the number and duration of physical therapy sessions. What is normally accomplished in two months of physical therapy can be accomplished in 3-4 sessions with INDIBA.

Ultrasound Guided Dry Needling

Myofascial trigger points often contribute to lower back pain. Dry needling is an outpatient procedure that inserts non-medicated needles into the trigger point to evoke a twitch response, releasing the trigger point and immediately relieving pain. Ultrasound guidance eliminates the need for multiple insertions, reducing pain and discomfort for the patient.

Ultrasound Guided Injection
Therapies

Injection therapies use natural/neutral solutions that stimulate cellular repair by either nourishing or irritating the targeted cells. Guidance by ultrasound ensures that the injected substances hit their mark, for maximum effectiveness.

Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP)

PRP therapy uses a sample of the patient’s own whole blood, which is spun in a centrifuge to extract a high concentration of platelets. When injected into damaged tissues, PRP initiates tissue repair by releasing biologically active factors such as growth factors, cytokines, lysosomes and adhesion proteins. The injected solution stimulates the synthesis of new connective tissues and blood vessels. PRP can help to jump-start healing in chronic injuries and accelerate repair in acute injuries.

Proliferation Therapy, aka Prolotherapy

Prolotherapy uses a biologically neutral solution, often containing dextrose, saline or lidocaine. The solution irritates the affected connective tissue, stimulating the body’s own natural healing mechanisms to encourage growth of new normal ligament or tendon fibers.

Personalized Treatment Means Faster Return to Play

At NYDNRehab, we believe that every athlete has a unique anatomy and distinct motor patterns that set them apart from their competitors. We never use a one-size-fits-all approach to injury rehabilitation. All of our training protocols are designed with the individual athlete in mind, based on our personalized data-driven analysis.

Our goal is to return you to your favorite sport or activity, stronger, faster and mentally prepared to meet the challenges of competition with confidence. Whether you need to recover after an injury, get in peak condition for the next season, or fine-tune your skills to dominate on the court or playing field, NYDNRehab is your premier New York sports medicine clinic for performance, injury prevention and rehabilitation.

DNS 3 month position training

Shoulder stabilization

Motion analysis testing

Kineo INTELLIGENT LOAD

Proteus System

Movement Varieties on The Proteus System

Running drills on kineo

Office video

HBM(human body model) – muscle activation analysis and feedback retraining

C.A.R.E.N.( computer assisted rehabilitation environment) – neuromuscular control therapy

Lower kinetic chain analysis and retraining

3D proprioceptive knee control training