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Injury rehabilitation is unique to every individual and in this article we will go through the journey that you should follow to enable you to come back stronger than ever. Where people tend to go wrong is that they stop doing any form of activity and then try to jump back in where they left off, often leaving them frustrated as their injury is still niggling away.

Some may see a therapist to get some “hands on” treatment, expecting their miracle hands to do all the work. Unfortunately this is only a small part of the journey and the following steps will hopefully give you some guidance on what to expect from your injury journey and what we do here at FACTR.

1. Initial Consultation
2. Acute therapy
3. Injury Specific Rehab (complimentary treatment)
4. Training preparation & building phase (+specific injury rehabilitation)
5. FACTR training (fundamentals, SGPT + bootcamps)

** hands on treatment may be used alongside your training - this should be used to compliment your training to help you perform and feel better. This should not be where your time is focused**

1. Initial consultation

This is where all the questions get asked, we go into detail around your current injury and try to create a bigger picture of what/why/when etc and also discuss any serious injuries that you may have experienced and see if referring you to a specialist may be better.

This is also a great time to get to know you a little better, what it is you want to get back to doing and helps us to tailor your rehab programme so it is specific to your, your needs and the time you have to adhere to your rehab programme.

2. Acute therapy

The main aim here is to eliminate potential painful symptoms and facilitate the ability to initiate more movement/exercise based sessions. This often includes traditional ‘hands on’ manual therapy and adding low level exercises are also beneficial at this point as exercise has been seen to have a positive impact on speeding up recovery.

3. Injury specific rehab

This is where we get to the good stuff, this is often a specific gym-based session based on your current injury, previous history and some of the areas of weakness highlighted in your initial movement screening.

The biggest thing to note with this is that this part of your rehab journey doesn’t always follow a linear path. Things may have to be adjusted and amended based on how your body responds to what has been prescribed for you and should continuously progress based on adherence, improvement in symptoms and how well your body responds to what it is you’re doing.

4. Training preparation & building phase 

In this phase we start to integrate more generalised training alongside your specific injury rehabilitation.
Rehabilitation becomes more advanced and can start to become included as part of your normal training programme.

Strength training is seen to be directly linked to injury prevention as research indicates that resistance training promotes growth and/or increases in the strength of ligaments, tendons, tendon to bone and ligament to bone junction strength, joint cartilage and the connective tissue sheaths within muscle.

This phase is really important in helping build a solid foundation to help make your body as resilient as possible which will not only help reduce the reoccurrence of your current injury but will also help with general injury prevention.

5. FACTR Training

This phase may include a variety of the different session types that FACTR have to offer. Whether that be starting out with fundamentals if you are looking for a less intense training style or if you are wanting a higher intensity style of training the Small Group PTs and bootcamps may be where you’d like to start.

With the good habits gained through your rehabilitation journey the FACTR way of training should compliment all that you have learnt throughout the process. It will be very beneficial to continue to complete your injury specific exercises alongside the group training session and maintenance treatment may be something you may want to consider at this stage as well, especially if you have a specific event or goal in the diary.

 

Not every individual's rehab journey will follow this path in a linear way, there may be times where you have to take a step backwards, or potentially be floating between 2 of the steps. This again is part of the journey! But if you are struggling or don’t know where to even start as always we are here to help so please ask away!