If you wait for the right time to do your physical therapy, you’ll wait a long time. Physical therapy isn’t convenient — that’s the reality.
It takes time and effort to overcome issues with your body and movement. There’s no quick fix to injury, bad movement habits, and poor physical fitness. People repeatedly try shortcuts, but they only get short-term results. The root cause isn’t addressed, and they end up back where they started. Sometimes, they end up worse because they believe they actually did something and stop trying altogether. We see the shortcut approach regularly as clients use medicine, adjustments, cupping, dry needling, cortisol shots, surgery, and so many other methods in the wellness and fitness space.
Don’t get me wrong—there is a time and place for many of these approaches, but using them with the intention of a faster recovery without putting in hard work to prevent future injuries will only yield short-term gains at the expense of your long-term goals.
Your body isn’t a machine that can be fixed in an hour. It can take days, weeks, and even months to overcome damage to your body. The speed at which you recover has several factors, including nutrition, pre-existing fitness, age, and genetics.
What many overlook in their recovery or injury prevention is consistent commitment. It is a vital component 100% controlled by you. The clients who see results faster and grow beyond their initial injury do the work daily. They don’t need someone looking over their shoulder to put the work in consistently.
This commitment is difficult to maintain over a long time. Our clients typically see positive results and reduced symptoms within 2 weeks. But that’s where we also see the most setbacks. They feel better and become less consistent about following their home exercise program. They take their foot off the gas because they feel better. Recovery and prevention require managing the highs and lows of pain and your mental state.
The home exercise programs Dr. Samantha gives our clients are designed to get more challenging as your body can handle it. You need to do it every day to maximize and accelerate your recovery. It doesn’t matter how you feel mentally — you still need to do the work. You can’t rely on emotions, inspiration, or external motivators. You have to decide to do the work consistently if you expect to recover and prevent injuries.
Quite frankly — it sucks. Doing the exercises isn’t fun in most cases. We try to make it suck less, but ultimately only you can control whether you’re doing the work to get better.
To be clear, the home exercise programs aren’t intended to be the same forever. They gradually progress in difficulty and movements as your muscles, joints, and tendons recover and rebuild from the damage they experienced. What we teach clients is that the commitment to daily movement is something you do daily.
Every week, I have something tight or tweaked, causing me new or different pain. My commitment to consistent movement helps me work through the issues I face. My goal is to keep moving for decades. That means Dr. Samantha is constantly updating and adjusting my home exercise program to handle the ever-changing demands I put on my body. I don’t do it perfectly. But I’m better now than I was a year ago. A year ago, I was better than I was 3 years ago.
I’ve started doing the work daily and encourage you to do it, too. Take control of your movement and your body for the future. Schedule a discovery call with Dr. Samantha to learn how we can help you become a better version of yourself.
