Don’t make your pain worse
When you have an injury, pain or niggle, it’s human nature to try to do something to help it. Most people will start to do something themselves, it may be a simple movement or a stretch.
Oftentimes, people will repeat the movement that is sore expecting it to help. Most times it doesn’t.
There are certain circumstances when you do need to repeat some movements or exercises and gradually build up the tolerance. But this is only after an assessment to find out what is going on. Most of the time it won’t help, or can make it worse!
With most injuries/pain, the initial goal is to avoid irritating it while trying to move as much as you can. It’s a fine balance.
After you’ve made sure you’re not doing any movements or exercises that make it worse, the next thing is what do you do to make it better.
Don’t waste your time
We’ve had a lot of people into us recently who are WASTING THEIR TIME doing stretches on areas that are not tight! Just because something feels tight doesn’t mean it is.
It may be tension in the nerve, the muscle may be tense because it is weak, or maybe the muscle is just overloaded because something else isn’t doing it’s job.
Most people who come into us and say “my hips are just so tight, I’ve been doing hip mobility exercises for weeks” or “I feel like my pelvis is out of place” don’t actually have tight hips or an out of place pelvis.
The body is complex. How something feels doesn’t always add up with what is going on.
This is where getting a comprehensive assessment is vital.
We often find that people who self-diagnose and try to do their own stretches/exercises to help their issue, spend so much time doing those exercises. Very often, a lot less time is needed, it’s just the type of exercises that need to be changed.
Do the right exercises for you
So what are the right exercises?
Unfortunately this can’t be answered in a blog.
The answer is based on what is going on and just as importantly, why it is going on.
Performing a thorough assessment of how your body is moving, the mobility of different areas and the strength of each muscle group will show the signs of what is going on and why your pain started in the first place.
People often spend all of their time focussed on the site of the pain, but a lot of the time the cause is coming from somewhere else (frequently the knock-on effect of a previous injury).
You could be wasting your time or even worse you may be irritating your issue further.
If your car was starting to chug a lot, would you lift up the bonnet and start fiddling around with things to see if it would help. Probably not. You’d probably bring it to the mechanic and get them to assess what’s going on.
If you’re not assessing, you’re only guessing.
Get your head to toe NCT to find the chinks in your chain. You shouldn’t get your car checked more often than your body!
You can call us to book an appointment on 025 35015 or Book Online.
