Explaining our approach to injury rehabilitation
21st February 2022
Have you ever found yourself questioning the quickest route to injury rehab?
Perhaps you’re thinking about taking that first step towards recovery but you’re not sure where to look.
With so many rehabilitation methods out there, we wanted to take a moment to explain our approach to injury rehabilitation and why we structure it the way we do.
Techniques with temporary fixes
Historically, therapists have commonly resorted to manual therapy and soft tissue therapy as a tool for treating all injuries. After all, they feel nice and you can float out of an appointment feeling so much better than before. But these effects are often temporary. Sooner rather than later you’ll need another treatment. In the early stages of an injury, there is a lot to be said for the appropriate use of soft tissue therapy and manual therapy but, once you get beyond the first few days, this is where there is a strong argument for phasing in different modalities i.e. exercise therapy.
Using our hands on joints and muscles can kick in natural pain-killing systems, decreasing neural activity that can be stuck in an unhelpful feedback loop. But ultimately it’s re-educating movement patterns, strengthening our musculature infrastructure, tackling other issues in parallel such as balance, control and coordination and helping you develop confidence in moving that make all the difference for long term effective recovery.
Most importantly, the exercise therapy needs to go beyond simple low resistance exercises that are done on repeat 3 times per day in infinity. Instead, it needs to be an appropriately loaded progression that allows the body to adapt. If you are still stuck doing bodyweight glute bridges or the clams months or even years after the injury and you’re still experiencing symptoms, something is definitely going wrong in your rehab programme.
Although we wish it was possible, therapists aren’t able to lay their hands on you to fix and heal you. We really don’t have magical hands.
Healing through strength and sustainability
This is where Balanced Bodies’ approach to injury rehab comes in! Although exercise therapy may be harder, (after all, who doesn’t want to kick back and relax whilst magic hands or snazzy pieces of equipment “fix” the problem!) we aim to create sustainability with our methods. We work collaboratively with our clients to build practical, manageable exercise programmes that get to the root cause of an issue. This is done with the focus on building strength and flexibility, in conjunction with targeted support around the troublesome area. We educate our clients, assist in banishing pain where we can, and hand over the power of healing to them, meaning no ongoing weekly expenses with temporary fixes – everything we do is meant to have long-term lasting effects. After all, the body is perfectly designed to heal itself – we just help remove some of the barriers that might be slowing it down!
Recovery should be a relatively simple process in its methodology, the hard part is committing to consistent, structured rehabilitation in order to feel the benefits. That’s why at Balanced Bodies we don’t over-engineer our approach. Teaching our clients sustainable rehabilitation through movement and strengthening sees people go on to live pain-free active lives, often stronger than they were before, which is exactly why we approach injury rehab this way.
Get in touch today to book your free consultation and to learn more about how we can help you on your injury rehab journey.
Photography: Mark Hankins