Exercise Rehab and Programming

Exercise Rehab and Programming

If you experience an injury, illness or receive surgery you may benefit from seeing one of our therapists to help with your rehabilitation. The treatments we offer can help relieve painful symptoms, regain muscle strength and joint flexibility and retrain functional movement. All treatments are tailored to address your recovery needs and work toward your personal goals, weather that’s a return to normal daily activities or resuming sports participation. A treatment approach that is useful to many patients, particularly those engaged in sports, is exercise rehabilitation and programming.

Exercise Rehab is commonly given to most patients as a continuation of the treatments received in clinic. It is important not only in regaining lost physical function but builds on the benefits of care you receive during treatment sessions. Perhaps most importantly it is the core of self-managing your rehabilitation once you have reached the stage that you no longer need regular therapy sessions from a clinician. Some of the benefits gained from exercise rehabilitation include;

• Regaining muscle strength and endurance.
• Restoring joint flexibility.
• Improving proprioception and sense of balance.
• Functional exercises to retrain movements’ specific to rehabilitation goals.
• Restores confidence in physical ability and progression of recovery.

Although exercise can be beneficial as part of your rehabilitation programme, it is important to listen to your therapist to know what frequency and intensity of exercise you should perform. In the acute stages following your injury or surgery the emphasis is on gentle movements to maintain range of movement and flexibility. The body will be going through an inflammation phase delicate new tissue being laid down to repair any damage. Without advice, many people rush through this phase trying to do too much too quickly. This can lead to more tissue damage, repeated bouts of inflammation and greatly delay overall recovery. The acute phase usually last no longer than the first few days.

Once past the acute phase, as the body continues to repair the damaged tissue of your injury, it will be important to use progressive strengthening exercises. Combined with controlled stretches this will promote increased tensile strength within the newly repaired tissue. This will be important to regaining good functional ability at the site of injury and reducing the risk of re-injury. Always follow your therapist’s advice on the speed of your exercise progression to avoid complications and delays in recovery. This repair stage can last up to six weeks.

In the very late stages of healing, when the majority of tissue strength and flexibility has been restored, your therapist will focus your exercise programme on functional retraining to prepare the healing tissues to resume work activity or sports participation. Even at this stage building strength and flexibility, along with improving biomechanical technique, is important to not only achieve the fullest recovery, but also reduced the risk of injury reoccurrence.

Many treatments our therapists provide during clinic sessions will alleviate the symptoms of your injury or condition. However, to gain the most benefit from such sessions and achieve the best possible rehabilitation, compliance with your experienced therapists exercise programme and advice is very important.

If you would like more information on how osteopathy or physiotherapy can help treat you, or want to book an appointment, please email nick@nickcastle.co.uk. or phone us on 0207 386 9777.