The Importance of Sticking with Your PT Plan

It’s no secret that setting out time for exercise and physical therapy is beneficial to habit formation, but it’s also beneficial to your long-term health.

It is believed that exercising at the same time every day increases oxygen intake and reduces perceived tiredness. In general, the longer you adhere to a regimen, the less difficult it becomes. So, does it matter when you exercise? The question is more nuanced than you may imagine.

Tips for Sticking with Your Physical Therapy Plan

Make it Unique 

Identifying what works for you is the first step toward a lifetime of healthy physical exercise. Consider your lifestyle, time limits, finances, and physical condition while choosing hobbies. Remember to include your preferences and dislikes.

Make it Work

Are time restrictions a major issue? Make a precise weekly calendar to start arranging your workout routines. Look for methods to include workout blocks into your routine. Can you go for a stroll half an hour early every morning? Is this going to mean going to bed earlier? Be practical. If you know you’ll be helping the kids with their schoolwork after dinner, don’t schedule exercise until you believe the whole family would benefit from a break and a brisk stroll. Look for methods to include extra activity and fun exercise into your regular workout routine, such as doing an extra loop around the mall while shopping, stair climbing, or a Saturday morning bike ride. 

Adjust the weak parts of your schedule after the first week. What’s the good news? As your conditioning improves, you’ll be able to increase the intensity of your workout without overworking yourself. This implies you’ll be able to get more done in less time; for example, you’ll be able to walk 4 miles in the time it took you to walk 3.

Set Some Objectives

Most folks won’t be able to go from being inactive to becoming an exercise enthusiast overnight. Furthermore, having unreasonable expectations will lead to disappointment and failure. Setting a long-term goal, such as walking for 30 minutes five days a week, then breaking it down into monthly goals is a better method. Focus on walking three times a week for at least 10 minutes each time throughout the first month. Walk one extra day each week during the second month (bringing your total to four days per week). In the third month, add another day. Then, every two weeks, add five minutes to each walking session until you meet your target.

Make a Progress Chart

Start assessing your progress once you’ve set your objective. Make a simple chart to keep track of your daily walking minutes in a daily planner or on the refrigerator. In any case, keep a written record of your accomplishments. Strength training, stretching, and balancing programs can all benefit from comparable charts.

Recognize Your Efforts

It’s a reason for celebration when you achieve your workout goals, even if they’re only short-term. It demonstrates your dedication to bettering your health. Find methods to congratulate yourself. Make sure your reward is meaningful and pleasurable, regardless of how big or tiny it is. If your ultimate objective is to lose weight, avoid incentives that you may regret shortly after, such as eating an ice cream cone.

Returning to Normalcy 

Even the most committed exercisers can get off track. A severe cold, an out-of-town vacation, or a period of terrible weather can all throw you off track. That’s why learning how to recover your routine is crucial. When you’ve missed an exercise, assess your current fitness level and create objectives appropriately. Don’t expect to pick up where you left off if you’ve been away from your routine for two weeks or longer. To allow your body time to acclimatize, cut your workout in half for the first few days. 

The most difficult part may be putting oneself back into an exercise mindset. When you relapse, try to preserve your faith in yourself. Instead of focusing on your feelings of shame and failure, consider what it will take to get back on track. You’ll be surprised at how soon your program will feel normal once you resume it. Here are some ideas to help you reignite your motivation:

• Consider yourself working out. Recall your favorite elements of fitness. 
• Make a tempting reward for yourself when you achieve your first objective after returning to your program. 
• Make a list of walking companions for your next few excursions. 
• If finishing your entire workout program feels daunting, break it down into smaller portions and allow yourself to stop at the conclusion of each one. When you reach a checkpoint, though, instead of quitting, urge yourself to carry on to the next one. 
• Rather than focusing on why you don’t want to exercise, think about how amazing you feel after doing one.

What is the significance of physical therapy? 

When a muscle or joint hurts, your first reaction is generally to take a pain killer, get some rest, and apply ice or heat. If the pain persists after these simple at-home solutions, physical therapy may be necessary. 

Physical therapy can assist with: 

• Reduce the load on your joints by strengthening your muscles. 
• Improve your mobility and/or balance. 
• Joint pain relief 
• Avoid being hurt. 
• After an injury, regain function, stability, and mobility. 

Who is a candidate for physical therapy? 

Physical therapy may assist with a variety of ailments and pains, including: 

• Back discomfort and stress due to arthritis 
• Knee discomfort from a herniated disc 
• Sciatica caused by rotator cuff tears 

Physical Therapy Objectives 

Physical therapy benefits include reduced pain, improved function, increased range of motion, proper alignment, and more. Of course, the ultimate objective of physical therapy is to restore function and return to activity, but these outcomes are sometimes a result of the greater rehabilitation process, in which many patients acquire new ways of moving. 

The Importance of Physical Therapy 

Physical therapy is a vital part of recuperating from an injury, whether you have surgery or not. 

1. Fix poor movement patterns: Physical therapy can help you address the underlying issues that are causing your pain whether you have an accident or persistent pain. It can not only relieve pain, but it can also assist you in making changes to avoid future issues. Physical therapy is frequently sufficient to treat an injury and return you to play. 
2. Prevent scar tissue build-up: It is natural for scar tissue to grow after an accident or surgery; nevertheless, it is critical to avoid this build-up since scar tissue can cause discomfort and stiffness. Physical therapists utilize stretching and other manual approaches to minimize scar tissue formation and ensure that recovery is not impeded.
3. Stretch tight muscles and joints: Stretching is necessary for maintaining flexibility and range of motion. Your physical therapist will create a stretching regimen tailored to your needs.
4. Strengthening muscles: Strengthening activities serve to improve the surrounding muscle, which can alleviate joint strain. Physical therapy can help you strengthen the muscles around your injury as well as the muscles around it. Strength imbalances frequently result in injury.
5. Treating pain. Physical therapy can assist improve post-surgical results by treating pain, scar tissue, strength, range of motion, and other factors.

Preventing Injury

The prevention of future and/or re-injury is the ultimate stage in sports rehabilitation. We lose strength, mobility, flexibility, muscular function, and proprioception as a result of an accident or surgery. It is possible to restore all of it through sports therapy, but depending on the injury, there is a larger chance of re-injury, either on the same spot or on the opposite limb.

Re-injury is a tremendous blow both physically and psychologically after the long and grueling path of treatment and recovery. As a result, if an individual is able to return to sports, the path to rehabilitation continues into injury prevention. Injury prevention is self-explanatory: it aims to avoid re-injury, additional injury, and/or becoming hurt in general.

Stick to Your PT Plan with Desert Edge Physical Therapy

Desert Edge Physical Therapy focuses on an individual’s goals and tailors the injury prevention program to those goals. Because the majority of patients who come to Desert Edge Physical Therapy are injured, our injury prevention program will focus on removing the source of the injury. If, for example, a tight and weak muscle group caused the injury, we will educate the client about it (why it happens, how it happens, and how to avoid it) and focus the injury prevention program on avoiding the muscle group from becoming weak and tight again. 

Injury prevention is vital in every sport, regardless of whether or not an athlete has previously been injured (and active daily living in general). Physically recuperating from an accident is only one part of the process; the emotional side of injury rehabilitation, if not more so, is just as exhausting. “Prevention is better than cure,” as the adage goes.