How Rehabilitation Therapy Helps Improve Your Range of Motion Post-Injury

An injury is devastating, especially if you're active in your job or sports. It can take time to heal, especially after a fracture, ligament, or tendon injury. Although it will heal, an injury takes the proper rehabilitation to return to normal.

Rehabilitation exercise and physical therapy are excellent treatments for helping people regain strength and mobility around injuries. Starting therapy soon after injury is the best way to kickstart recovery.

At Pinnacle Health Chiropractic, our team specializes in treatments that help you move and feel better. Dr. Jason Ablett is our board-certified chiropractic specialist who offers rehabilitative exercise after an injury to get you back to your pre-injury range of motion.

What is rehabilitation therapy?

We offer Rehabilitation therapy after an injury or surgery to restore the body's range of motion and function. It's one of the best recovery methods because it provides the affected area strength, stability, and mobility.

Dr. Ablett specializes in rehabilitative exercise after an injury or surgery to repair an injury. It's the best way to retrain your muscles, ligaments, and tendons to work as before the injury.

Rehabilitation exercise therapy is an ongoing treatment that lasts several weeks to months, depending on your injury and specific needs. During this time, Dr. Ablett assesses what exercises work best to improve functionality around the injury.

The rehabilitative exercise aims to strengthen the muscles and tissues around the injury to allow adequate blood flow and repair. It also helps stabilize the area, enabling you to improve strength and mobility at the injury site.

After partaking in a rehabilitative exercise plan, you should be able to return to your normal activities and regain full function of the injured area.

Exercises that improve range of motion

The range of motion (ROM) is how the area moves and how far you can move it. For example, the shoulder joint has a wide range of motion, while the knees and elbows are more limited.

A full range of motion (ROM) is necessary for sports activities and everyday activities like reaching a high cabinet or getting dressed. However, after an injury, your body limits ROM to the injury site due to inflammation and pain.

Being older and dealing with an injury further complicates the range of motion because chronic pain and issues like arthritis complicate movement. During rehabilitative therapy, our team assesses your range of motion to determine where to start in improving movement after an injury.

To improve the injury, we typically perform three different ROM exercises. Passive ROM describes someone else or a machine moving the body part while you lie or stand still and relax.

Active ROM is where you use your muscles and body structures to move the joint independently. Active assisted ROM happens when you move the joint but require some assistance due to restricted muscles or pain.

There are different exercises for each type of injury to improve ROM. For example, if you have a neck injury, Dr. Ablett suggests cervical lateral flexion and rotation. Shoulder injuries require exercises like shoulder abductions and wall slide stretches.

Will I be the same after an injury?

How well your ROM improves after an injury depends on many factors, including the severity of the injury, your age, and how well you adhere to the rehabilitation plan. Dr. Ablett utilizes various tools to get you back as close to normal as possible after getting hurt.

As your body heals, Dr. Ablett offers various treatments to reduce inflammation and pain, limiting ROM. He provides a customized rehabilitation exercise plan involving specific strength training, balance, and flexibility exercises to improve function and motion around the injury.

He also offers stretches to relax the muscles and improve blood flow to the area. In addition to the rehabilitative exercise plan, he provides complementary therapies like fascia release and chiropractic adjustments.

Following a specific protocol helps you return to pre-injury activities and may prevent further injuries. The better your ROM after an injury, the less likely you will have complications.

Call Pinnacle Health Chiropractic today to schedule an appointment for rehabilitative therapy or request a consultation with Dr. Ablett on our website.