What is corrective exercise and why do I need it?
Corrective exercises are designed to address areas of dysfunction and improve imbalances
in strength that can cause pain.
Muscle dysfunction can be caused by injury, over-use or weakness. Continued dysfunction
in movement causes imbalances in muscle strength. This can lead to pain which is normally
when your therapist gets involved.
During a treatment your therapist can improve circulation to the area, reduce tension and
lengthen the muscles affected. In order to get the most out of treatment the muscles will
need to be strengthened by being used in the correct way. The exercises your therapist
prescribed are designed to address the imbalances and therefore reduce the dysfunction.
The exercises may directly involve the area of complaint or may strengthen other areas to
help relieve pain. This is because joints and muscles rarely work alone in functional
movements like walking, sitting, lifting etc
I came in for shoulder pain. Why is my therapist treating my lower back?
Through assessment your therapist will note how you are standing and moving. They will
ask questions about the type of pain, when it started, what helps it or makes it worse. Using
this information they will be able to treat the cause of the pain to help reduce the likelihood of
recurrence.
Let’s say you noticed your right shoulder aching about a week ago and it just won’t go away.
A few days before that you had a sore low back on the same side. You don’t know what
triggered that but about 2 weeks beforehand you rolled your left ankle. It was pretty sore to
walk on for a while so you were limping. Thinking about it you’ve rolled that ankle a few
times in the past.
Using that information your therapist would be treating your shoulder and low back for
tightness caused by dysfunction in walking. They may also perform some tests to see if
there is a weakness causing you to roll your ankle. Using soft tissue techniques and
corrective exercise they will work on correcting any imbalances and hopefully strengthen the
ankle to help prevent further injury.
