Rehabilitation and Exercise Training
Posted on 13th September 2021 at 15:16
Here at Bodyworks although all of our Physiotherapists are very experienced hands on therapists, exercise prescription is an equally important part of any treatment programme.
Part of our initial assessment will be to decide what your goals are and what our aims are for your treatment including both hands on therapy and a personalised exercise programme. We will work with you to decide if we are looking at strengthening, increasing movement, pain management, sport specific exercise or balance and proprioception, amongst other things. Our main aims are to reduce your pain and improve your daily function as well as getting you back to work, your hobbies or your sport as soon as possible.
Benefits of Exercise Therapy
Restore the body from an injury or surgery and promote a faster recovery
Improve strength of muscles and flexibility and range of movement of joints
Reduce pain
Return to sport quicker and improve your standard of play
Reduce the chances of re-injury
Improve your overall fitness levels
Increase mobility, balance and co-ordination
Decrease in the risk and progression of many chronic diseases
Help build bone strength and health
Reduce anxiety and stress and improve sleep
Delay onset of arthritic conditions
What do Strengthening Exercise Programmes Include?
Strengthening exercise programmes will include a variety of exercises designed to target specific groups or individual muscles. These exercises will begin easier and progress as strength is developed. These exercises may include working against gravity or your own body weight or with resistance bands or free weights. Your physiotherapist will work with you to devise a programme that is easy to fit in to your daily routine.
There needs to be a purpose to each exercise and ultimately, they need to be functional, ie relating to what task you are trying to achieve. An example of this is to teach you to do squats if the function we are trying to achieve is to get down to reach things off the floor.
We use a programme called Rehab my Patient and you will receive an email of all of your exercises each with access to a short video clip of the exercise. Sometimes we are able to video you using your own phone in the clinic doing certain exercises so you will then have a record of it to refer to later.
We need to learn what your short and long term goals are to adjust your exercise programme as we go along with your treatment. You need to let your physiotherapist know if you are struggling to do the exercises without this communication your physio may think that the exercise programme is not working and will try and adjust it. We need to work together so that your goals can be achieved but also be continually challenged.
Here at Bodyworks we really want you to get the best out of your treatment programme and the very last thing that we want you to do is avoid exercise for fear of causing injury or pain. If you are concerned about returning to exercise or returning to sport and want help then please seek advice from one of our physios. We will assess you fully looking at your injury, weaknesses your functional movement patterns and then design a programme that addresses all of these and your goals. This programme can be progressed under direct supervision until you are able to resume the activities that you outlined in your goals.
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