Balance, neuro & concussion recovery
Train at the edge of your ability. Without the fall.
You wear a body harness connected by an overhead trolley to a ceiling-mounted Solo Step track. That lets patients who are genuinely at risk attempt stairs, curbs, and full obstacle courses at real effort — if balance is lost, the harness catches you before you reach the floor. Safe enough that the nervous system can finally learn. Installed at our Hollister clinic.
The Solo Step overhead track
The safety net changes what training is possible
Conventional balance therapy has a ceiling built into it. A therapist holding a gait belt can only allow what they can physically catch, so training stops well short of the challenge the patient actually needs. Progress plateaus, and the patient learns caution instead of capability.
The Solo Step system is a rail mounted overhead, running the length of the training space. A trolley travels the rail and connects to a body harness. If balance is lost, the patient is caught. Nothing hits the floor.
What that unlocks is not a gentler workout — it is a far harder one. Patients ascend and descend real stairs, negotiate uneven surfaces and obstacles, turn their heads while walking, carry loads, and recover from deliberate perturbations. These are the tasks that rebuild reactive balance, and they are exactly the tasks that are too dangerous to attempt without protection.
The track is fixed to the ceiling, so this training happens at our Hollister clinic, opening January 2027. Wound care equipment travels to all three offices; the harness does not.
- Full-effort stair and curb training, up and down
- Obstacle courses that mirror real terrain and real distraction
- Reactive balance and perturbation work
- Gait retraining without the distortion a hand-hold introduces
- Early, aggressive weight-bearing for orthopedic recovery
Who it’s for
Four populations, one piece of equipment
Neurologic recovery
Post-stroke hemiparesis, Parkinson disease, multiple sclerosis, and vestibular disorders, where the margin for error is smallest and the need for repetition is greatest.
Fall risk & deconditioning
Older adults after a fall, a hospitalization, or a long illness — including patients with diabetic peripheral neuropathy who have lost the sensory feedback balance depends on.
Orthopedic recovery
After joint replacement, fracture, or ligament reconstruction, harness support allows earlier and more confident loading, which accelerates the return of true strength.
Concussion & post-concussion
Graded exertional and vestibular-ocular work in a setting where a symptom flare during dynamic balance training carries no risk of a second injury.
Concussion care
Built from a program, not a protocol printout
Dr. Bartges opened and directed a dedicated concussion specialty program in Delaware and served as the rehabilitation lead for a Division II college athletics program. That work covered the full arc: acute management, graded return to exertion, vestibular and oculomotor rehabilitation, cervical spine contribution to headache, and the return-to-learn and return-to-play decisions that sit at the end.
The population most often underserved is not the athlete who gets cleared in ten days. It is the patient still symptomatic at six weeks — dizzy in the grocery aisle, exhausted by a screen, told to rest until it passes. Persistent symptoms respond to structured, progressive, individually dosed activity far better than to continued rest, and that is the work we do.
- Graded exertion testing and individualized aerobic progression
- Vestibular and oculomotor rehabilitation
- Cervicogenic headache and neck-driven symptom management
- Dynamic balance and dual-task retraining under harness protection
- Return-to-learn and return-to-activity coordination
A note on timing
If you sustained a head injury within the last 48 hours, or you have worsening headache, repeated vomiting, confusion, or weakness, seek emergency medical care before calling us.
What a course of care looks like
From evaluation to discharge
Standardized evaluation
Objective balance and gait measures, strength and range testing, vestibular and oculomotor screening where indicated, and a clear picture of what you want to get back to.
A plan with a target
Goals written in terms of the stairs at your front door, the aisle at the market, the distance to the mailbox — not abstract scores.
Progressive loading under protection
Harness-supported training that escalates as fast as your system tolerates, because protected difficulty is where adaptation happens.
Removing the net
The same tasks, unharnessed, then out in the real environment. Discharge means you can do it without us, not that your visits ran out.
Start with a conversation, not a form
Tell us about the wound or the fall, and we’ll tell you honestly whether we’re the right fit — and what your physician needs to send if we are.