Why Rehab Failed You
Something I hear all the time from patients is “I’ve been to physical therapy and it didn’t work” or “I’ve tried rehab, I’m not doing rehab again”. Now, sometimes the patient’s needs are beyond the rehab professionals’ scope and need to be referred out for further care. However, this usually isn’t the case. You didn’t fail rehab, rehab failed you and one of the most common reasons why is that it’s too easy for you.
One of my favorite quotes is “if it’s not challenging you, it’s not changing you”. Not only does this relate to life but it also directly correlates with rehab and physical therapy.
Here’s a real-life example to help us better understand this. I have a friend who is dealing with a low back disc herniation. He’s a competitive triathlete who works out in some way almost every day of the week. He started seeing his physical therapist for his low back pain. His PT gave him a few exercises for him to do and told him he needs to do them 3x a day until his back pain goes away. This is nothing against his PT but the exercises are extremely easy and aren’t challenging him at all. If he were to rate them on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the most difficult thing he’s ever done, I guarantee he would rate them at a 1. I also guarantee that the majority of his other daily activities are harder than the rehab he does. What does this mean? It means that his exercises are way too easy and honestly they’re a waste of time. If your other daily activities are harder than your rehab exercises then what’s the point?
Rehab is supposed to be challenging and prepare you for your activities. Let’s say you have a construction worker that has to pick something up all day long that weighs 50 lbs, what would be the point in doing rehab only picking up 5 lb weights? It’s meaningless right? In both these situations they aren’t failing rehab, rehab is failing them.
When I perform rehab with a patient, I use a difficulty scale of 1-10 and I ask every patient how difficult every exercise is for them. My goal is to make sure most of the exercises are around a 5 or 6 out of 10 in difficulty. And once they get to the point where that exercise gets easier I either make that exercise more difficult or move on to another progression.
I hope this has helped some of your reading this and maybe made you feel better about rehab failing you in the past. Even if rehab didn’t work before doesn’t mean it won’t in the future. So keep an open mind and remember that not all rehab plans and rehab professionals are created equal.
Until next time,
Dr. Andrew Schneider DC, ATC
