Q. Should I not wait for the pain to subside before doing physiotherapy ?
A. You have pain because the structure has gone into a fault. You need to correct the fault to reduce the pain signal. The singular, specific, prescribed Exercise is your Treatment for your pain. Do It When In Pain.
Q. I do my corrective exercise only twice a day, isn’t that enough?
A. Initial few days you may have to do it more than 4 times a day to counter your triggering activities and postures. The idea is to correct the fault every few hours, whether it pains or not, for prevention too.
Do you ever take only the morning dose of any medicine if the doctor has advised to take it 3 times a day, and yet expect it to have the desired effect?? Similarly, do the treatment exercise as frequently as your physio has prescribed, and not any less.
Q. How often should I do the corrective exercise?
The frequency of exercise is directly proportional to the intensity of pain. The more the pain, the more frequently in a day you need to do it. If in a couple of hours it reduces, you can decrease the frequency of exercises.
Q. How may sets/repetitions is enough?
A. As many as it takes to reduce and not increase your pain. Anywhere between 3-10 repetitions per set, and 1-5 sets are sometimes required with a break between each set. Overdoing it or not giving enough recovery break might also increase the pain.
Q. I don’t have the time/am too bored/lazy to do the corrective exercise.
A. With mechanical pain, the only way to get an improvement is to move it in the right direction. It doesn’t take more than a minute or two to perform the singular exercise. You can surely spare the time and positive energy to do something which will benefit yourself.
Q. I don’t like exercising, cant you do something to me instead? Some machine or massage?
A. We teach you to be self reliant. Why would you want to be dependent on any machine or on us. Apply the knowledge that we impart to you. You can self manage your pain mo matter the time or place.
Q. For how long will I have to continue with the exercises?
A. Till the time you get better and stay better in terms of movement and pain, then you can reduce the frequency of the exercises, but still keep doing them for a couple of weeks for the maintenance of the reduction.
Q. I feel fine with my exercise, then the pain comes back, which leads to frustration and then I don’t want to do it.
A. That’s great that after doing the corrective exercises you feel better and yes, we agree that sometimes it might get frustrating, but a little bit of patience and altering the daily activities, making note of when the pain occurs, what was your posture, how long did you that activity for, and acting on them with small changes, will then help reduce the frequency of pain onset.
Q. What medicine can I take or apply for my pain?
A. Just like any other medical professional cant do justice to you by prescribing you an exercise or a physiotherapy machine, A physiotherapist also cannot prescribe medicines to you.
Each of us has undergone our respective under-graduation, with not enough in-depth knowledge about the other. If you expect us professionals to cross-prescribe each other’s treatment, you may end up getting worse.
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Warm regards,
Dr. Abhishek Bangera and Team
Physiotherapists.
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