Weeks 1–3
Pain
Calm the pain down.
Hands-on techniques ease whiplash and calm the muscles guarding your neck and back, starting your very first visit.
What We Treat
Motor Vehicle Accident treatment in Cherry Hill & Burlington.
The stiffness that showed up two days after the crash, once the adrenaline wore off. It’s fixable, and it starts with a cause-first evaluation, not a guess.
Sound Familiar?
Does this sound like you?
- Waking up two days after the accident stiffer than you were the night it happened
- Turning your whole body instead of your neck to check a blind spot
- A headache that starts at the base of your skull every afternoon
- Flinching at every red light because your body remembers the impact
- Feeling fine on the scene, then feeling wrecked once the adrenaline wore off
- Not sure if the ache is “normal” or something you should have looked at
Two or more? Keep reading.
Why It Happens
Crash injuries are a symptom. Something is driving them.
A car accident loads your neck, back, and shoulders with force they were never braced for, even at low speeds. It’s usually some mix of whiplash, soft tissue stretched or strained past its normal range, joints jarred out of their usual rhythm, and the muscles around your spine tightening up to protect an area that got hurt. Adrenaline in the first hours after a crash can also mask how much is actually injured.
None of that shows up on a quick glance, and some of it doesn’t show up on imaging at all. It takes a real, cause-first evaluation to find out what’s actually driving your symptoms, whether that’s a joint, a muscle, or a nerve getting irritated. That’s why rest alone so often falls short: it doesn’t retrain the guarding pattern your body built after the impact. Find the real cause, and the fix gets obvious.
The Honest Truth
Waiting after a crash doesn’t make it wait on you.
If you keep waiting
- The guarding pattern your body built after the crash becomes how you move, permanently
- Untreated whiplash turns a few weeks of stiffness into months of flare-ups
- Your injuries get harder to document the longer you wait to get evaluated
If you start this week
- You know the actual cause by the end of visit one, documented and tracked
- Hands-on relief starts before you leave the building
- You get a plan with an endpoint: a real one, not an open tab of visits
Nobody regrets starting too early. Every week, someone in our clinic says they regret waiting.
How We Fix It
The same four phases. Built for recovery after a crash.
Every plan has an endpoint. Here’s what the four phases look like after a motor vehicle accident.
Weeks 3–8
Prime
Get your motion back.
Targeted mobility work restores the range you lost in the joints and soft tissue jarred by the impact.
Weeks 8–14
Perform
Make it strong enough to trust.
Progressive strengthening rebuilds the support your neck, back, and shoulders lost while they were guarding the injury.
Weeks 14+
Prevent
Return better than before.
Driving, checking your blind spot, and full activity get tested under real load before you’re cleared to go all-in: that’s the endpoint, not just another appointment.
A great team of physical therapists, focused on the patient and genuinely invested in your progress.
Shared by K Rod · Motor Vehicle Accident
Week 1: couldn’t turn her head to check a blind spot without turning her whole body
Week 12: driving the carpool route again, headache-free
Motor Vehicle Accident
12 weeks
Questions, Answered
What people ask before booking after a motor vehicle accident.
We’d rather see you sooner. Adrenaline and inflammation can mask an injury for the first 24 to 72 hours after a crash, so feeling “okay” at the scene doesn’t rule much out. Most soft tissue injuries don’t need an MRI to start treatment, we begin with a hands-on evaluation to find what’s actually affected, and if imaging ever becomes genuinely necessary, we’ll help you get it. Getting checked early also creates a clear record of what happened and when.
In most cases, yes, gentle guided movement helps more than total rest does. Staying still lets the muscles around the injury tighten into a guarding pattern that’s harder to undo the longer it sits. The key is dosing the right movement for your specific injury, which is exactly what a Doctor of PT sorts out at your evaluation, then progresses safely as you heal.
Most patients feel meaningful change within 4–6 visits. A full plan after a motor vehicle accident runs through all four phases, Pain, Prime, Perform, and Prevent, typically over 10–14 weeks, depending on the severity of the crash and how long symptoms went untreated. Either way, you get a plan with an endpoint: you’ll always know which phase you’re in and what’s left, not an open-ended string of appointments.
Book Your Visit
Ready when you are.
Request a time and a real person calls you back, usually within two business hours. No phone tree. No ‘someone will reach out.’ Just a plan.
- Hours Mon–Thu 8am–7pm, Fri 8am–2pm
- Prefer to talk now? Call either office. Cherry Hill 856-424-0993 Burlington 609-880-0880
- Same-week appointments available
5.0 · 607 Google reviews
Typical response: under 2 business hours
Step 1 of 6
Request sent.
That’s the hard part done. We’ll call during business hours to lock in your time. Most people are on the schedule same week.
Visit Us
Care this good, this close.
Specialized Physical Therapy – Cherry Hill
Specialized Physical Therapy – Burlington
- 11 Cadillac Road, Burlington, NJ 08016 (opens in a new tab)
- 609-880-0880
- Fax: 609-227-4423
- frontdesk@specializedphysicaltherapy.com
- Mon–Thu 8am–7pm, Fri 8am–2pm