Movement is medicine
Movement…it seems so simple, right? The human body is made to move, but more than 50% of adults don’t meet physical activity guidelines. Whether it’s walking, swimming, pilates, yoga or weightlifting — it is crucial to keep active. After all, movement is medicine!
Benefits of movement
1. Pain reduction: most people don’t realize that movement can help pain! Absolute rest may help to relieve immediate symptoms but it can adversely impact your tissue tolerance. We say this within reason, (we are not recommending you should get up and run if you’ve just broken your leg), but if you rest for too long, your muscles and joints tighten up and make it more painful when you do eventually get going. We are playing the long game here!
2. Recovery time: you may have heard the term, ‘active recovery’ before, and for good reason. After a strenuous workout, some low intensity movement like walking or swimming is far more effective than being idle. It allows your blood to keep flowing, reduces lactic acid build up and keeps your muscles flexible to allow for a speedy recovery. The same applies when returning from injury. Normalising movement through rehab exercises does wonders in nourishing your body through increased circulation and gentle muscle strengthening. But we’ll let you know exactly what exercises to perform when it comes to your personalized rehab plan.
3. Aerobic fitness: exercise helps our muscles' ability to pull oxygen out of our blood and circulate it around the body. This reduces the need for the heart to work overtime and gets our blood pumping efficiently! This not only reduces the risk of disease but also helps us to live life to the fullest. Everyday tasks like climbing up stairs or playing with your kids shouldn’t be hard work! Try adding a regular 30-minute walk into your routine and watch your energy levels increase!
Physiotherapy treatment
Aside from the benefits we’ve discussed, we will do our best to find ways of incorporating movement exercises into your treatment and rehab plan.
Whether it be a stretch, low-impact exercise or dynamic movement, the exercises we prescribe are tailored to you. We will thoroughly assess your injury and movement capabilities and customize a program that supports progress and allows you to grow over time. Increased range of motion and flexibility, improved coordination, strengthened muscles, healthy posture and injury prevention are just some common outcomes we love to see. Our goal is to restore your body in the most efficient and effective way!
Movement-based therapies go beyond helping the acute problem at hand. Movement promotes health and well-being by encouraging the full participation of our patients, and provides an opportunity for them to take control of their rehab journey. We know that it can be difficult to stay disciplined with the exercises we prescribe but trust us, they do make a world of difference!
Movement is essential in building positive and permanent change — movement is definitely medicine.
If you are coming back from injury, feeling a bit too sore after your recent workout or need a kick start to get moving, then get in touch by calling 250-398-5566 or email prophysioworks@shawcable.com to see one of our qualified physios!