Latest / The Driven Athlete / Why Waiting To Rehab Can Make Issues Worse | Ep 140

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Why Waiting To Rehab Can Make Issues Worse | Ep 140 · The Driven Athlete

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you're a driven, active person who wants to reach and pursue a higher quality life with some ambition, then guess what?
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: This podcast is for you.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: This is the Driven Athlete Podcast.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: So imagine somebody gets injured or they're battling some pain.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: There are issues with delaying the recovery process.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: So if you if a person delays the recovery, here are the pitfalls involved with that.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: It just makes it more challenging to get things back to functioning appropriately at 100%.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: And here's here are the reasons why.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: When somebody gets injured, uh it makes it the longer that somebody delays recovery process, the more challenging it is for their range of motion to come back.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: All right, their range of motion in their joint gets more difficult to regain function and get back to the standard functioning uh range of motion longer than they take to start the process.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: The reason is because scar tissue can develop for sure.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Scar tissue is always going to develop.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: But if we don't influence the scar tissue to grow in certain patterns and pathways, it grows disorganized.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that disorganized growth of scar tissue is what creates blocks and contractures to happen at the extreme end.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: So the pliability and the range of motion becomes more limited and more difficult to regain because the scar tissue grows more disorganized.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: But if we move through the tissue as it grows, it grows in a more organized fashion and more parallel fiber fashion.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: So they can glide and slide better like this versus being all gnarled up and disorganized and they can't lengthen.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: So the lengthening of the tissue and the fibers and the collagen fibers, um, it's it's just that's super important for the range of motion to come back.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um early movement actually helps to decrease swelling.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: The presence of swelling or fluid in the joint uh increase it actually has been found to be correlated with decreased muscle activation and muscle strength.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: So the more delay that there is, we're limited in range of motion and scar tissue disorganized disorganized uh growth.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then also the muscle activation is going to be inhibited because there's more swelling in the joint.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: And swelling, uh, we improve that if we start moving early and get the fluid out and it facilitates the healing process.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: The key with all this stuff, though, is that when you do recovery things, like if you work with us, like and we're working on range of motion, strength, and activation, whatever, um, the key is to leave not feeling worse or more lit up.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: If we're lighting things up, like if a person is trying to recover, but they're making things more irritated and painful, it's just gonna increase the inflammation and increase the swelling.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's gonna delay stuff.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: The key is to do things that aren't um that are gonna be purposeful and helpful to fix on, to fix the problems that you're developed that have been developed, but not the expense of causing more pain.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because motion's lotion, right?
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: The more we know that, the more emotion, the more lotion for the joint, blood flow, nutrients, oxygen, it facilitates the healing response.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: But if we do too much and it's too uh aggravating or too aggressive, it's just gonna facilitate more inflammation and more irritation.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: So the key is to not hurt when you're done, but rather be like, man, I feel better right now.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: I feel looser, right?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like it feels good.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's the threshold of intensity that we need to be at right now.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, if we we need to test the water, but too much, it creates just like a uh and more inflammatory response.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: And we want to avoid that roller coaster.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: So the presence of swelling uh decreases muscle activation and muscle strength.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: So some will be weaker for longer, and it's more difficult to reactivate those muscles.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: And if we can get the fluid out and start the healing process, the muscle activation will be better.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: So weakness is uh it's just prolonged and it delays the healing process if we don't start moving and activating things early, right?
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: As appropriate.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um neural hypersensitivity is also super common and delayed.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: So imagine somebody gets ero, like hurt, right?
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: They injured something, things are sensitive and it hurts.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you also have nerves, all right.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: You have muscles, bones, ligaments, tendons, but you also got nerves, and nerves innervate everything, and they're all super sensitive and they're super um uh resentful, all right, and they remember things.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but they're very sensitive and they take forever to heal and settle down.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's just about like settling the nerve, neural hypersensitivity down.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: But the longer it takes, or longer somebody delays their recovery process, the longer that this neural hypersensitivity can be prolonged and then it delays the healing process again.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: So things will stay sensitive for longer, and um that sensitivity um can also create uh some muscle guarding.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: So muscles can be weak, but they can also be tight.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: So muscle tightness and uh it's gonna limit range of motion, and then it makes things more stiff, and you're not moving as well as you could move, limiting the fluid to get out of the joint, synovial fluid can't be produced, nerves are super hypersensitive, range of motion is limited.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: That leads to people limping or just compensating during this recovery process, and that's gonna lead to other issues.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: If it's like their leg, something in their ankle, their knee, their hip, whatever, um, and they're gonna compensate their gait pattern and their walking pattern.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's gonna make their low back and their hips hurt.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's just a common thing that we see a lot.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: So these this is an example pitfalls of waiting too long and delaying the recovery process.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, with those, with that nerve uh uh activation issues and communication problems, uh, it also leads to proprioceptive issues.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: So neuropropriocepton neuroproprioception is uh there's a lot of nerve endings in your joint capsules of your joints, and these mechanoreceptors and joint capsule nerves, nerve endings, they give feedback of like where you are in space.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: So imagine if you had your eyes closed, right?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: You could touch your fingers together, you know where your fingertips are in space by feel.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the nerve endings in your joints and your limbs and in your body that communicate that let you know where you are in space, even though you're not looking at them.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that's called proprioception.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: That also helps with balance.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: So the other way they put this is like imagine like a football player is going up to catch a ball and jump in the air, and they need to land with their feet in bounds, but they're not looking at their feet, they're trying to catch the ball at the same time.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: How do they know where their feet are in space, but they're looking at the ball at the same time while they're moving?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's proprioception.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so they know where their feet are in space and they have a feel for when they need to try to land their toes to stay in bounds while they're looking at the ball and trying to catch at the same time.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: So that's propriooception.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: So the proprioceptive feedback is also inhibited with this neural inhibition and hypersensitivity, and that uh can delay the healing process.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Again, these pitfalls of just recovery, delaying the recovery process.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then the last one I'm gonna mention is just confidence.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: I I mean, I we have definitely, I personally have put a lot more weight on the mind-body connection because you can't separate the mind from the body no matter what you do.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the confidence level of just being able to move and groove better, um, it just takes longer and longer to develop the confidence back in the joint or your body.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: As in, like, I don't feel confident planting on my leg and shifting um into a different direction, changing directions.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'd be like agility, right?
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Or I don't feel confident like pushing off of my arms, my shoulder, since I injured my elbow, my hand, my shoulder, I just don't feel confident like really pushing off of my arms or doing a pull-up or whatever.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Just don't feel confident with it.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: And there's apprehension involved and that in a bit, that uh natural apprehensive uh thought that just takes a while to develop back, probably the longest of anything.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine if somebody uh sprains their ankle or if they have like a if they sprain their knee, whatever, and they're trying to do um agility movements and power movements and jump off one leg, like a power layup or a single leg box jump, maybe better rec uh in in-gym exercise.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: They're not gonna feel confident pushing through their knee and driving through their leg and exploding and then landing on it.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that alters their mechanics and that alters um compensation that can develop compensation patterns in the other leg or other compensatory strategies in that same leg.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the biggest risk for injury is compensation patterns through high velocity movements.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: So it's super important to um begin the healing process early so that the confidence pushing through your leg or your arm or using your bot like that joint um as equal as the other areas um so that you don't compensate through other things, and that just can increase the risk of another injury.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the confidence that's that takes the longest to get back, right?
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: If anybody's ever had as this is the extreme end, but like ACL surgery, that's a journey, right?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: And late stages in ACL rehab and recover and recovery is we're doing like explosions, jumps, agility, running, sprinting, deceleration, acceleration, lateral plane, transverse plane, all that stuff, right?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's fun, it's cool, back to playing sports.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: The most difficult thing that we find is the athletes feeling confident, accepting their weight and their load through their knee while they're decelerating, and then have to re-accelerate and change directions in another direction, or just explode off the ground and then land on their same knee in a graceful and stable fashion, right?
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's because it's they're scared of it, right?
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's like it hurts.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want it to buckle.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a nerve, I haven't used it yet, right?
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: That confidence, it takes miniature winds over a long period of time to wean into being more confident and be able to like uh drive through your leg and explode through it the same way you did before surgery or the other leg as like the role model.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: So that confidence takes a while to get back.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: So those are collectively, those are kind of maybe all the a lot of the um pitfalls of delaying recovery if somebody gets injured, right?
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the last thing is if it's not like a tru if it's not a surgical thing, well, it still could be surgical.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um is is the higher it increases risk of letting things develop into a chronic pain issue.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: So chronic pain is a whole nother story, and I've done a couple podcasts on pain science and chronic pain.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but uh the longer somebody delays their healing, the in a little bit increased risk of of allowing it to develop into a chronic pain problem.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that is uh a challenging thing to to cycle to break.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um so we encourage people to start taking action as soon as they can to uh get things moving better and feeling better.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: So if you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, we're always open to uh comments, questions, concerns, and conflicting opinions, ideas.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and if you have any issues yourself, like pain, or you know somebody, feel free to share our info or just give us a call or email us because we're always uh enthusiastic and optimistic to help people get back to 100% and fix their problems so they could get more functional with less pain.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: I had a guy one time, he was like, You know what you're doing?
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: You're like increasing my functionality and then decreasing my discomfort.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, that's a great way to put it.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: We're decreasing discomfort and increasing functionality so you can get back to doing things at a high level that you want.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like this guy in particular, like he wanted a foil board and then paddle board, and he also exercises, exercises a lot like like leg exercise and lunges, Bulgarian split squats and box jumps, and then wanting to go on walks with his wife and paddleboard and foil board and like do a bunch of and boating, right?
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, all that stuff.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um he's like, Yeah, I'm actually I'm getting more functional at the things that I want to do that are fun, and you're decreasing my discomfort at the same time.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, that's exactly it.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: You're right.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's a way, great way to put it.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, don't hesitate to reach out.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: We'd love to help you.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: We live vicariously through helping out patients, and uh, we're always um optimistic and enthusiastic.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: So give us a call and we'll catch y'all next time.