Hi friends,

Most people, at some point in their life, will go to physical therapy to rehabilitate an injury. While in PT you get prescribed specific exercises to ameliorate pain and improve function.

But what should you do after your formal PT is complete? Do you need to do your home exercises for the rest of your life?

While there’s not a one-size-fits-all answer to this question, there are generalities that I tell my patients.

If you sustained an injury due to macro trauma, think of a car crash or sporting injury, then you may only need to do your PT-specific exercises if it ever flares up.

But if the injury was due to habitually poor movement or other chronic injuries, you may need to do your exercises more frequently and throughout your life.

For example, I did intensive physical therapy for my lower back about 6 years ago where I was doing my exercises every day. Now, I perform a similar type of exercise for my back to prevent reinjury/flare-ups once a week. And if my back is particularly flared up, I’ll perform the exercises about 3-5 times a week until the symptoms settle down.

If you are dealing with chronic injuries or have an injury more or less under control, I recommend keeping up with your home exercises. Even if all is going well, 10 minutes each week dedicated toward injury prevention is worth more than 1 hour of rehabilitation after the injury flares up.

Until next week,

Kevin