Maintenance!

Unless you’re 10 years old and have no past injuries, everyone has probably experienced some bout of musculoskeletal pain in their lifetime. Some of these pains may be big like breaking your leg or tearing your ACL, but many of us have pains that show up that we have no idea where they came from. The traditional medical model tells us that if that pain doesn’t just magically go away we need to go through all sorts of testing, imaging, and specialist evaluations to diagnose the problem. While those things are definitely needed in many cases, often times if you get a low back tweak or a short bout of mild knee pain, all you need is to go see your physical therapist.

Anti-rotation deadbug: for core strength and anti-rotational control.

With a lot of these small tweaks or pains, a little bit of maintenance work on your body can make a world of difference. For example, say you had an old ankle sprain and you didn’t do anything for a year and you start getting ankle pains. Your PT might determine that you need more stability work to get the muscles in your foot and ankle working better to control the ankle. This type of small maintenance intervention might be the difference that keeps your ankle feeling better for longer, versus any other issues coming up from that small injury.

Bulgarian RDL: for single leg stability and strength.

As a PT myself, I have exercises I work on in a maintenance capacity to keep my body feeling healthy. We all have something that bugs us periodically and maintaining mobility or stability in a specific area can help those small aches and pains go away. Currently, I am working on a lot of hip and core stability/strength exercise to keep my lower back feeling good. A couple of my favorites have been the anti-rotation dead bug (picture 1) and the the Bulgarian RDL (picture 2).By spending a little bit of extra time working on my maintenance exercises, I can keep myself feeling good so I can enjoy my workouts, hobbies, and daily life without having to worry about pain. This is why we recommend that many of our patients continue in a maintenance capacity to help them feel good for the long term.

Cole Miller PT, DPT, CF-L2