If anyone reading this has been injured to the point that it has requried some level of physical or mental rehabilitation, then you know how hard it is to continue to commit yourself everyday. Committing to Injury Rehabilitation is a corner stone to a successful return to daily activity and sport participation. Below well talk about three main reasons why it’s important to stay engaged, and three ways to continue to engage, but first lets talk about a couple reasons that is hard to stay committed. First and foremost, the majority of you likely do not have access to a full Athletic Training room every day, so you are required to go to Physical Therapy (PT) clinics, which in turn cost money and the number of visits are limited by insurance. PT Clinics are an amazing place to rehabilitate, and if your therapist wants you to be successful then they will give you at home therapy to bridge the gap between visits. In this model a lot of the process falls into your ownership, which can be great, but also presents challenges, such as motivation, resources, and that feeling of “oh I’m good enough, I don’t have pain anymore”, which the later can be a big contributor to re-injury.
The main goal of injury rehabilitation is to return to as close as pre-injury status as you can, but in many cases, especially in sports, it’s important to make yourself better than you were at pre-injury level. If you can achieve that then you will continue to reduce the risk of re-injury. Staying committed to the rehabilitation process will be your first step in getting there.
3 Reasons to Stay Committed to the Injury Rehabilitation Process:
Get out of pain and back to function, seems pretty obvious, but often people stop short of function, as they pain is gone. This can be very dangerous as it leaves the door open for re-injury or even injury to other parts of the body. You will develop poor movement patterns, and likely cause chronic injures around your body and set yourself up for a longer and harder rehabilitation process. Kids can be so flexible and can recover so quick, even into their high school years, but its very imporant to not develop bad movement habits early and often. Stay committed to the Rehabilitation process to avoid this.
2. It takes more, If your goal is to return to sport, it’s gonna take a whole lot more than a few PT visits to get you there. Your commitment to getting better is what will drive you to get better. It important to rehabilitate the injured systems that are at a deficit, but also address any other deficits that may have led to the injury, or possibly could have prevented it. This is why you need to take advantage of the days between your visit to continue to, but in in general it will take more time than usual to get back to a sport level function, regardless of what you have to do.
3. Prevent future injuries, I’ve eluded to this eariler, but it is very important. What is the point of getting injured, working hard to rehabilitate it, just to go out and re-injure yourself. Now, sometimes you just have bad luck, but important that you do everything you can to try and prevent future injuries. This included taking a deep dive with the person over seeing your rehabilitation and make sure that they are working in a manner that impacts all of your systems that need to be improved upon. As we develop here at Youth Sports Med we will also have more tools for you to do this.
Now, here are 3 simple ways to continue to stay engaged in your rehabilitation and be proactive in trying to prevent injuries.
Listen and communicate with your PT, Athletic Trainer and your Physician, they have the most up to date status on your injury, and can lead you down the correct path. Now its important to communicate and advocate for yourself when you feel something isn’t right and we’ll talk more about this in another post in the near future, but for now just know that your generally in good hands and this is an important first step.
2. Make rehabilitation part of your daily routine, if you set aside time for it everyday then you will be committed to doing it and being successful. Be sure to put t he work in on your non appointment days. Rest days are important as well but there are other alternatives to just simply resting, stay tuned as we will have a whole rehabilitation series coming down the pipe to better explain this.
3. Stay up to date with new trends, be empowered to know when things are going great, or not, and have a pulse on what should be happing through the process. With this empowerment you can take the drivers seat for yourself, or your child. You can advocate when necessary and ensure the process is moving int he right direction. If you want more information on how to be success with this stay tuned here at Youth Sports Med Hub.
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