Returning to Exercise After Injury: How Reload Can Help
Empowering Your Path to Recovery
Returning to exercise after an injury is often a challenging undertaking. To do so successfully, it’s crucial to find the right starting point. As such, a physical therapist must consider your unique circumstances and goals. This is where Reload, with our holistic and positive, personalized approach, can play a transformative role in helping you return to an active lifestyle.
We understand that the journey back to fitness can be intimidating. This is especially so after an injury. Our mission is to guide you through the process of recovery through the power of exercise, education, and community.
In this article, Dr. Marc Jacobchick, a Physical Therapist here at Reload, discusses our process, from exercise as the means to an end all the way through how the power of community supports everything at Reload.
Exercise As The Means To An End
At Reload, we’ve worked with a wide variety of people, including athletes – many marathon runners among them – and individuals who wish to return to active life after injury.
Our approach incorporates the use of various exercises. These might include kettlebell exercises, sprinting or accelerating, learning how to jump and run, and dynamic movement to aid the body’s positive adaptation during the recovery process.
As an example, a person suffering from lower back pain may not be ready for high-impact exercise like sprinting or jumping. So, at the start of their physical therapy journey, simpler exercises like bridges and planks may be more appropriate. But these are a means to an end – stepping stones to the client’s goals for their physical fitness.
Our goal is to tailor the training to the specific activities the individual wants to engage in, whether it’s getting back to regular workouts, hiking mountains, swimming, or participating in marathons and Ironman triathlons.
Motivating Clients with A Positive Experience
From the information and knowledge that we learn about a client, we understand their unique situation. Exercise might not be appropriate because of pain or a lack of understanding about their body’s post-injury capabilities.
Therefore, in some cases, we start with basic movements and simple exercises to help develop confidence and remain comfortable. Initial exercises may resemble floor exercises, yoga, or stretching routines.
Empowering clients to overcome their fear of pain, and understanding the impact of movement on their bodies, is a cornerstone of our approach. To aid this, we:
Guide clients to overcome the fear of pain by demonstrating how movement can positively impact their experience
Use specific exercises and positions and highlight their functional benefits, such as standing up, getting up from the floor, reducing pain, or navigating stairs
Help clients realize that targeted exercise is more beneficial than passive modalities like massage or stretching
When a client understands the need to expose their body to the right types of exercise to perform certain tasks or activities, they move to the fast lane on their road to recovery.
Reload’s Holistic Approach to Program Management
A key aspect of the Reload approach, and one that is most impactful, is program management. We take a holistic approach. We zoom out to see the whole picture and consider not only individual exercises but a whole week or month of training.
To do this, we continually evaluate the client. We look at where they are experiencing stress, their form on different exercises, where they’re clustering all of their work, and when they’re experiencing the injury. All of this helps us to pinpoint areas that require adjustments to prevent injuries.
For example, if a client experiences issues during running, it might not be the activity itself but rather the frequency and spacing of workouts. Learning to manage these aspects allows us to optimize training and reduce the risk of injuries. It’s also about educating the client and helping them to learn the importance of recovery time.
Preparation Starts by Understanding The Why of Your Program
There is always an educational component to physical therapy. Unfortunately, the time constraints of traditional rehab or physical therapy environments often limit the amount of guidance a client can receive. When I worked at a different company, I only had 15 minutes with a client.
In a quarter of an hour, I had to build trust with the client, get them to tell me what they were feeling since the last time I saw them, then deliver whatever kind of manual therapy I was going to do that day. On top of all this, I had to teach them a little bit about their experiences and what to expect next. It’s not a system conducive to sustainable success.
At Reload, we prioritize unlimited time and focus on building trust with our clients.
This unrestricted time enables us to deeply understand our clients’ needs, experiences, and progress. We aim to instill confidence in both our clients and the rehabilitation process. Rather than conforming to arbitrary insurance requirements, we focus on helping clients achieve their goals ─ whether it’s hiking Mount Kilimanjaro or running a marathon.
The outcome is that our clients feel prepared and confident after completing a program tailored to their specific aspirations.
Finding Long-Term Support In Reload’s Community
At Reload, our commitment doesn’t end when clients achieve their initial goals.
Typically, we meet people who are in some sort of pain or have experienced an injury. If we’ve brought them to where they are no longer in need of my physical therapy services – they are operating relatively pain-free or free of injury ─ then they can still be part of our community and take advantage of our training services.
From one-on-one training to club memberships, we strive to ensure that staying within the Reload community is accessible, while still providing high-level quality and support. We want our clients to have ongoing opportunities to participate in and maintain their health and wellness journey.
The Bottom Line
Recovery from injury can be challenging. Our approach turns traditional physical therapy on its head and delivers a transforming and empowering experience. By tailoring the physical therapy and training program to your unique situation, needs, and goals, improving your understanding, and giving you access to a supportive community, we set the stage for your continued success in resuming an active lifestyle post-injury.
Are you ready to start your journey to full recovery?
Book an appointment with us to start with a comprehensive 90-minute body evaluation.
