How to get better

I believe the fundamental stages required to get better and overcome an injury are: correction, rehabilitation, maintenance and resistance.

There's a lot to be gained from following the steps and making sure that healing has occurred and chance of  re-injury is limited:

Correction:

Correction entails moving the joints and vertebra back to the most ideal position. To allow a vertebra to move the muscles automatically change their tension, stiff muscles begin to relax and movement patterns begin to change.

If appropriate correction does not occur we can examine to find out why not.

Rehabilitation:

All spines degenerate over time; if it were possible to transplant a perfect spine how long would it take before it started looking like the former?

Traumatic injures and our habits cause stresses on our spines and affect their position and structure.

A previously injured spine is more likely to resume habits that may cause further damage.

Rehabilitation means changing our habits for the better to prevent re injury.

Sitting, sleeping, standing, exercising, our movement patterns and the way we time our muscle contractions whilst moving, how things work when we're stressed or off balance.

Most of the time simple Ergonomic changes may be implemented and have very favorable outcomes. Learning a new exercise or technique can teach your body to function better and prevent reinjury can have long term benefits.

The typical example is a mom who's had a C/section, cutting through the abdominal muscles forces the body to use other muscles to try and stabilize the spine the habit of using the wrong muscles is retained. It takes a 5 minute exercise to feel the abdominal muscles work again. If this is maintained it boomers the new habit.

These changes can be tested and monitored as improvement occurs.

Maintenance:

How well the corrective and rehabilitative steps have gone determines the required maintenance one may require to prevent a relapse of a condition. If a you have a desk job and you hunch over a laptop all day the likely hood of full recovery is limited without ergonomic improvement and postural improvement, once posture is improved what schedule is required to maintain it before it deteriorates again and symptoms reoccur.

We can test this with functional orthopedic tests and exercises that require specific muscle recruitment. Improvement and Prognosis can be measured and scheduling can be done accordingly.

Resistance.

In sports such as tennis  and golf it's often said that to make real gains in ones ability you need to make your weaknesses strengths, if your volleys or short game are weaknesses work at them until they're an asset to your game. Why not apply the same logic to an injury; if your core muscles are weak don't just rehab them until they work continue until they become an integral part of your functioning.

There's and endless number of exercises that can challenge your balance and stability, range of motion and control, the challenge can be fun and again measurable outcomes can be rewarding.

If you'd like any help with Correction, Rehabilitation, Maintenance or Resistance please don't hesitate to give me a call.