Therapeutic Exercise
Posted by Stuart Fossella on Tuesday, July 18, 2017
Therapeutic Exercise
And are we going to do the Physio treatment as well?
A patient said something very interesting to me the other day and it got me thinking...
I had a great review with a patient suffering from a tendon injury in the leg. This was causing pain and an inability for her to participate in sport and exercise.
After listening to her explanation of the problem I did the Physical examination and soon diagnosed that a tendon in her knee had been irritated. Based upon this I proposed a plan for putting things right. This did consist of some hands on stretching techniques, but I made it clear that the mainstay of her her treatment (in my humble opinion) was going to require getting the said tendon strong enough to tolerate the loads and demands that she wanted to place on it in her sporting activity.
She then asked, “if I would do some other Physio treatments.”
It was this sentence that left me thinking the most. What other Physio treatments did she mean? “You know she said, a nice massage and the machines you lot use”..
If I asked my mum or some close friends what they think I do day to day as a Physio, I don’t actually think that they could answer me. So take someone who has never had Physio treatment or had it at an old school clinic - I can't really expect them to know what we do.
I think it was the fact that I’d told this lady the way forwards was to get down to the gym with me that threw her the most.
Sure if I wanted to give her ineffective treatment that meant she was still suffering from the same knee pain (or back/ankle/neck pain) in 3 months time I could have suggested we do a nonsensical rubbing of the knee. Or just keep manipulating the tendon for months on end. And we see a lot of this...It’s often why people come to see us because they have had ineffective treatments elsewhere.
To address, stiffness or weakness (the main issues we see in Physio) then sorry, because our Physio treatment requires dedication and your input. Remember you are with us for perhaps 30 minutes a week. We need you to make use of the other 167.5 hours you have available to you.
I'm not suggesting you dedicate the rest of your day to the rehab and miss meal times and do 10 million exercises a day, it’s not like that. But it’s true we might set you 15 minutes worth of exercise to do 3-4 x a week.
If it's 15 minutes every other day, it seems like a good shout. Or you could just keep coming back every 6 weeks...for the rest of your life.
So if you are ready to let us help you, and you are happy to help yourself. Or you have had a failed try at Physio already or your injury simply isn't getting better. Please ask us if we can help you - to help yourself!
If you want even more information then call 01242 802365 or Email us on info@straightbackphysio.co.uk
You know where to find us.
And please feel free to share this with anyone you think might find it useful :-)
