We’ve all heard the phrase ‘A dog is for life, not just for Christmas’.

The same philosophy should be applied to injury rehabilitation.

Adopting long-term injury rehabilitation habits

When you decide to take the plunge and start the process of recovering from injury, you are making the same commitment to yourself and your body as you would if you were adopting a dog! To nurture, care and bring out the very best in them.

As explained in one of our recent blogs (Explaining our approach to injury rehabilitation) there is no such thing as a quick fix when it comes to permanent injury recovery. Techniques such as soft tissue and manual therapy can be used as a useful tool for managing pain, and helping to restore a full range of movement, but aren’t there to magically heal your injury. Instead, exercise therapy, using tools like stretching, mobility and strengthening, helps develop a supportive infrastructure that enables your body to heal and thrive. The great thing about exercise therapy is that there is no other treatment or medication out there with as many wide sweeping benefits as exercise has. Alongside helping you recover from an injury, exercise also proofs you against cardiovascular disease and bone density issues, whilst also boosting your mental health! With all these positive side-effects, why would we use any other way to help our clients heal?!

Consistency in your injury rehabilitation routine reaps the best results

Think of it as someone who is training in the gym to get in shape. After going a few times a week for focussed sessions and sustaining this for a few weeks, they finally start to see results. Once they’re satisfied with the initial results, what happens if they stop going? Would you be surprised to learn that after a few weeks of no exercise or gym sessions, their strength and muscle definition has decreased? Of course not, because these things are lifestyle changes and need hard work at the beginning to signal a change, then continued and sustained effort to continue to reap the rewards.

Injury rehabilitation and recovery are no different! If after a few weeks of doing your stretches and exercises your pain stops, that isn’t a sign to give up! If anything, it’s a sign that you should keep on going: What you are doing is working, and you have the tools to keep your injury – and your body and mind generally – in that better place! Over time, injury rehab strength protocols also become a booster for other sports; making you faster, stronger and in an overall better physical condition – so it comes full circle! Don’t give that pain a chance to creep back in, instead use this as an opportunity to strengthen your body further to avoid future pain.

Recovery is a lifestyle change

Thinking of rehabilitation as a lifestyle change shouldn’t be a bad thing – you will reap many benefits by engaging with movement. From improved mental health to feeling physically fitter, the differences you will see once you start injury rehab will hopefully mean you never want to stop!

Seeing clients embrace injury rehabilitation programmes and experiencing marked improvements not just to their injury, but across all these areas, is one of the best parts of our work. We love being part of that journey and supporting clients to be able to take control and empower them to be their own champions of recovery. 

Get in touch today to see how we can help you start your recovery journey.