So you’ve had an injury, gone to see your physio, and had a long discussion about what your recovery entails. You’ve had the injured joint or tissue assessed, and as in many cases, requires active rehabilitation to increase the area’s strength and resilience, to hopefully never get the injury again. But how often do I do them? Once a week? Every day? Three times a day? In this blog post, we will give an overview of what your rehab may look like.

Joint Stiffness

There are people recovering from an injury or surgery, where stiffness may be one of their most concerning issues. In the case of a post-op knee replacement patient for example, or someone who has had a joint in a cast for several months, getting range of motion is a priority. Rehab advice around a stiffness-related pathology can range from once a day, to 5-10 times a day. This really depends on whether there is pain when mobilising the area, and how long the pain lasts afterwards. If you’re trying to regain knee flexion in your knee and it remains quite painful for 2-3 hours afterwards, then my advice may be to only do this exercise twice a day, to allow settling down of the joint. However, in the case of a stiff ankle for example after being in a cast, mobilising the ankle may be done every hour or two, especially if pain isn’t the limiting factor.

Muscle Injury

Whether you have pulled a muscle in your back, or suffered a hamstring strain after sprinting, rehab is probably slightly more spread out. In the rehabilitation of a muscle, the aim is to apply appropriate load and volume onto the muscle, so that your body will undergo protein synthesis, and the muscle will grow to become stronger and more resilient. In order to apply a heavy stimulus, give your body time to recover, and allow protein synthesis to take place, rehab of this region will likely be no longer than 2-3 times a week. When you hear a physio telling you to do muscle rehab every day, there are a few flaws with taht advice:

1. If rehab is performed every day, there is no possibility that the required intensity of muscle loading can be sustained and allow your body to recover at the same time. This approach will likely lead to a worse injury.

2. This is not practical in the real world. High-quality rehab often requires 30-60 minutes in a gym environment. With a job, family, and social commitments, it can’t be expected to perform quality, evidence-based rehab seven days a week.

Tendon Injury

You may have see your physio to assess and manage a tendon injury, such as a patellar tendon or Achilles tendon injury. Tendon have a latent period after rehab. This means that after certain types of provocative activities or rehab, tendons can become sore 24-48hrs after the fact. To respect this, it is often the desired plan to have high quality training sessions, at least 3 days apart. These sessions will often be intense with high loads, knowing that you will have 2-3 days afterwards to monitor flare ups, which may be indicative of too much load in your plan.

If you have any questions on whether physio is the best option for you, or you have any questions about MVMNT in general, feel free to contact via email.

- Jay Towolawi, Specialist Sports Physiotherapist and MVMNT Founder.