Are you giving your body it's best chance at recovery?
Everyone is looking for the quick fix, the panacea of life, the "bada bing bada boom!" that makes us instantly cured...unfortunately with injuries, that is almost never the case. The body is a complex machine, with many systems intertwining, working synchronously to allow us to move around as we wish. When something upsets that harmony, such as an injury, it takes time to not only to repair the injury, but for all your bodies systems, which may have adapted to help compensate for the injury, to then re-adapt and achieve harmony again.
Our body is constantly changing in response to our environment and how we behave in it. A good example of this is if I were to lift heavy furniture every day, I would become stronger, if I never had to lift anything heavy, I would remain less strong. You could then consider that our bodies are the way that they are, because of what we do, how we do it, where we do it, and how frequently we do it.
Commonly when we are in pain and see a physiotherapist, we already have habits that contribute to that painful feeling. Physios are experts at finding out all the reasons you may be in pain and have many tools to assist you in becoming pain-free, such as prescribing exercises and making some lifestyle changes.
HOWEVER, a 20-minute physio session isn’t enough to make those long-term changes in the body we were talking about, to do this we need to tap into those remaining 10,060 minutes of the week. It’s a physios aim to put you on the right path and help you stay on that path toward a pain-free, happy life, but it’s up to you to use all those other minutes effectively, to do those exercises and sustain those lifestyle changes, so that your body and your mind are constantly changing and improving toward a happier, pain-free you!
The tissues in the body, such as bones and muscles, take time to change and adapt. Each different type of tissue in the body has an optimum amount of time that it needs to be stretched or strengthened in order for it to get longer and stronger. Any less time and we don't improve as fast as we are capable of, and any more time and we can exhaust our bodies, again, slowing down the recovery. Sounding familiar?...Not too short but not too long...Not too light but not too heavy...Not too little but not too often...We want all of it to be just right!...We call this amount of rehab the GOLDILOCKS ZONE! Physios have extensive training in knowing what that perfect amount is for you.
You might be thinking, "easier said than done" right? And we agree! Lives are busy, lives are hectic, and free time is rare! We understand, which is why we want you to have control and power over your rehabilitation journey. That's why when you step through those doors at the physiotherapy clinic, it's not about looking up and saying "fix me", it's about entering into a partnership with your physio, becoming a team that collaborates and negotiates to find out what treatments suit you, what exercises suit you, and how can we work those into your daily life seamlessly so that this annoying/painful injury can have the least amount of impact on your quality of life!