Injuries can result from immediate trauma, such as an ankle sprain, or from repetitive overuse, such as ‘tennis elbow’ or ‘rotator cuff tendinopathy.’ Other injuries may not seem to have any obvious cause (chronic or recurrent neck pain, shoulder pain, elbow pain, low back pain, hip pain, knee pain, etc).
One of the most important aspects in all these cases is improving the tolerance of the tissue in and around the painful region. If the therapy is incorrect or incomplete, it will not improve tissue tolerance.
Appropriate physiotherapy (rehabilitation) involves a comprehensive assessment of the local region of pain, as well as the other areas of the body that can impact the painful area. For example, we often see teenage athletes with knee pain. In addition to addressing the tissues around the knee, it is often necessary to strengthen the foot/ankle, hip and core/pelvic stabilizing muscles to reduce the stress on the knee.
Many of our clients have chronic neck and/or low back pain, but they have never been provided with a comprehensive program to improve the tissue tolerance of their neck and/or back.
Selecting the best exercises and progressing the exercises to make them more challenging as things improve will allow the tissue to become stronger and more tolerant. The process can take some time, and requires some persistence. The benefits are a long-term solution that actively involves the client in their rehabilitation, promoting self efficacy and independence.
Your physiotherapist (or other rehabilitation professional) should have hundreds of exercise options to improve your tissue tolerance. Selecting the most appropriate exercises and progressing them as you get stronger is essential to improve your tissue tolerance. If the exercises temporarily increase your pain, a skilled physiotherapist with expertise in exercise selection can regress the exercise to make it easier, allowing you to perform the exercise with less pain. Once the regressed exercise gets easier, it can be progressed to a more challenging exercise.
The physiotherapists at Evolution Physiotherapy in the Kanata/Stittsville area have strong expertise in exercise selection and appropriate progressions and regressions to reduce your pain and improve your tissue tolerance, strength, and function.