The corrective exercise continuum clearly shows the progression you should be making from being in pain to having full rage of motion to creating strength from weakness, and finally, enjoying functional movement.
Most people go visit a therapist when they are in the inhibit stage. This is where you try to move but due to perhaps an incorrect movement, sleeping funny, you sneezed or you’ve over done it, you have pain somewhere in your body.
During this phase, we need to use myofascial release techniques such as dry needling or hands-on trigger point release to help desensitise the pain signal.
Once we have removed the pain sensation, we then work on lengthening the effected muscles to restore full range of motion in the effected muscles and joints.
In the lengthening phase, we use assisted PNF stretching to start to improve range of motion of joints and flexibility of muscles.
Once we have established full range of motion in the once effected area, we identify the weak muscles that may have caused you to have the initial injury.
Using specific resistance techniques whether it be body weight, bands, dumbbells or kettle bells, we target weak muscles to ensure they never let you down again.
Once you have developed adequate strength and muscular endurance in the once weak muscle, you then move to the final phase, which is integrate.
Integrate means you use more dynamic, full body movement patterns under load to ensure you can move how you are designed to.
Moving how the human body is designed to means flexing, bending, rotating, pushing and pulling regularly to increase your strength to be stronger than what your life requires you to be.
Pain is the biggest driver for people to seek help. Once the pain has gone people usually don’t bother with the lengthen, activate or integrate phases. This then leads to re-injury, constant therapy or simply never getting better.
Whatever you need for your body can be categorised through the corrective exercise continuum. It can help you identify where your body’s current ability or concern is. Are you in pain? Do you feel tight and restricted? Do you feel weak at times? Can you do life and feel great the next day?
If you are feel as though you are not functioning optimally and are struggling to feel “normal”, I would love to help you out.
