A common physical therapy axiom is to not put strength on dysfunction. The idea behind it can certainly be viewed a number of different ways but I've always interpreted to mean that if someone has pain they just shouldn't ignore it, keep pushing and training hard and they should try to "fix" whatever the underlying cause of the pain is.
Read MorePain is weird - just ask the dude over at painscience.com. But understanding pain helps us explain pain and explain the sensations many people often feel. Understanding pain can both be a desensitizer in its own right and help facilitate behavioural changes that lead to good rehabilitation.
Read MoreThe Challenge
The low back pain literature suggests that a specific intervention (e.g motor control exercises, targeted strengthening etc) are no more effective than general graded activity interventions. Suggesting that treating pain is not really about fixing some sort of impairment that is causing the persisting problem.
Read MoreMicroBlog
Controlled trials of exercise for low back pain often suggest that the type of exercise doesn't matter. And if you love "stability" exercises then these results can really challenge what you think and could even make us expert clinicians feel like we have less "special" knowledge...always challenging to be confronted with this.
Read MoreThis post was originally at Keynote at the Canadian Orthopaedic Manual and Fascial Therapy Division Conference on February 29, 2015 in beautiful Wawa, ON, Canada
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In the attached video we look at my daughter who has a lot of spine extension and when she extends this leads to a “hinge” in her lower back. What is often advocated during spine extension is a gentle and gradual “rounding” that is equal at each segment.
Read MoreI’ve been a mildly vocal critic of the thoracic ring and integrated systems model of treating pain and dysfunction for a number of years.
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