It’s funny, when I talk about physical therapy it may sound like I absolutely despise it. 🤔
Probably because out of the 22 months of PT that I have had throughout my knee journey, – – and I believe that is still an underestimation – – only about 10 accumulated months of it (or less) were smooth with logical progressions and great guidance. And 2 of those 10 months have been during my ACL recovery currently, since tomorrow marks my two-month date, post-surgery!! ‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️
Which means that a conglomerate of 12 months…..an entire YEARS worth of PT!!!!!!….has been “sub-par,” to put it nicely and politely. And that is GOSH-DARN FRUSTRATING, to say the very least. 👇🏼
It’s rough when you put all your faith and trust in your physical therapy “leaders” and they steer you off a cliff. Or they lead you down a road paved for someone else’s injury and it ends up hurting YOU. See, in both of these scenarios, the physical therapist isn’t actually DOING the program with you – – just leading you through it. Understandably so. However, when they make a mistake, it costs YOU and it doesn’t really affect them. Physically, not at all. And emotionally, only as much as they feel invested in you, in your progress, and in your abilities to persevere through rehab successfully.
Which is why it is a NECESSITY to find a physical therapist that sees your success as their own personal success. A physical therapist whose very mission is to help you get better and stronger and rehab your body properly and efficiently – – not leave you feeling more injured, broken, and confused, (even worse off than before having PT) which is how much of those “12 months of sub-par PT” left me feeling…..
I have since learned from my past mistakes and I truly feel confident with my current physical therapist, Brian, and my PT team, which is quite an incredible and pleasant change! One should not dread PT because they’re “feeling unheard and unseen” and/or because it feels like incompetence, a superiority complex, or a lack of concern for one’s well-being is present.
Through my numerous experiences, there is an enormous difference between great and quality-driven physical therapy and the minimized, aggressive, or cookie-cutter physical therapy that gives random exercises not formulated to you specifically. And I have definitely encountered all of the above throughout my many months of PT.
Does it sound like I despise PT??? Probably! OOPSIES!!! Geez, the negatives DEFINITELY outweigh the positives, that is for sure. And I’ve always been so precise with form, technique, and body awareness so PT had the greatest potential for being conquered so easily….had the proper guidance been there throughout the duration of my first experience at physical therapy, which was also my first ACL rehab. 😐
Even still, I actually really love physical therapy!! (Especially the good kind, where it takes into account the whole person!!!!!😉) I always have seen it as my guaranteed workout, during a time of healing and recovery where movement is more limited (or pretty stagnant) so PT is where you get to move, sweat, and feel more active!
Plus, at PT, this is where progress is found, benchmarks are hit, strength gains are made, and weekly/monthly results can be both seen and felt! There is magic found in rebuilding your body, learning about yourself through an injury/recovery process, working your way up the ladder from the bottom up, and dedicating yourself to rehab so that you can return to the activities and lifestyle that you love.
For all of these reasons, I always looked SO forward to physical therapy and any and all progress that I might make each session! And the same goes for now, as I continue to head to PT twice a week and make the slow build towards reinventing myself and “seeing what I’m made of.” As I move along, it will always be this long-term quest to find the balance of strength and stability in my body AND the maximum level of activities and movements that I can do, precisely and SAFELY. And I shall be moving like a turtle as I determine where that line is, that is for sure!! 🐢
And here is a major part of my plan in how I shall execute my mission of NO MORE KNEE INJURIES. Something that I truly believe was a factor in my recurring injuries because it was not accounted for during any of my previous 20+ months of PT. **Or in-between and after my rounds of physical therapy, which falls on me, too, (another one of those “hindsight-should-have-done” things) and I have been aware of incorporating this factor into my rehab for a couple of years now:
Training the SUBCONSCIOUS MIND!!!!!!
And I saw this image and it further confirmed that this has been a missing link in my previous ACL rehabs:
The two informative pieces of this image that stand out the most to me are “controls all the systems in the body” and “not linear (no distinction between past, present, & future).” 😯
Plainly, if I do not train my subconscious mind so that all of my systems, (especially my nervous system that controls my MUSCLES…..like my LEG MUSCLES 🤗), work as one unified and solid unit, then the risk of injury for me gets higher and higher. Because if our body systems are working at different speeds, injuries or issues often occur during the mistiming, the “gaps,” if you will, or the imbalances found within these differences. And all it takes is a second or less for an injury to occur during one of these “gaps.”
AND if I do not train my subconscious mind to release my past injuries, then I am setting myself up to continue repeating these very same injuries as I attempt to move forward. Which has been the case for me since 2015, once my knee injuries started to multiply. Because the subconscious mind cannot separate the past from the present, all thoughts, fears, and worries about the past are like them happening right now. And the subconscious mind believes these thoughts, fears, and worries are what we actually want and it begins to steer ourselves towards that very direction that we actually DO NOT WANT!!! I truly believe that this is what happened to me, numerous times, because I was thinking about “not injuring myself again”…..so my subconscious was hearing “injuring myself again.” Such a mess!!
To release the past and manifest a new, different, and better future, harmoniously, is my greatest, most optimistic vision for myself. Both as I move through PT and decades after PT is complete!!!
Because it doesn’t matter how strong I get or how much time I spend training my physical self. If I do not tap into the subconscious mind and literally “brainwash” it to work towards the actual outcomes that I seek, I do not stand a chance!!
And this is where PT failed me before. During both of my prior ACL rehabs, my physical therapists only looked at my injured knee, nothing else. They were only concerned with the “level of pain of my healing knee, on a scale of 1-10,” and all of the exercises were based solely off the knee progress and nothing else. For whatever reason, they didn’t treat me like a whole person experiencing these knee injuries. I was just A knee injury, which meant so many imbalances in the rest of my body were unaddressed.
Now I know better and I’m with a physical therapist that gets it:
And because my prior PT only looked at my knees and nothing else, you can be quite certain that any subconscious training or psychological readiness testing were not incorporated into my rehab. And that proved to be majorly devastating for me down the road as I attempted to resume my elite level of dance.
And even though I am not necessarily training to get back to a professional level of dance, I will always work as hard as I can to get as close as I possibly can to that elite level of athletics and fitness. Which means working with my physical therapist, Brian, incorporating ALL the training pieces – – full-body awareness, alignment, strength, balance, stability, proprioception, AND subconscious mind, neuromuscular, and confidence training – – and getting to the “other side” where I can stay free from knee injuries!!
Now, all I need to do………is JUST DO IT, like Nike says. Easier said than done…😬 However, at least I am VERY CLEAR with my list of to-do’s and not-to-do’s AND I can actually rely on physical therapy to guide me in all the ways needed. And that is certainly my silver linings gathered from all of my negative experiences of past PT timeframes!!
AND I sure hope you can learn from me and my mistakes so that you can find success and ease MUCH (much, much, much…) quicker and with much less struggle than me!! IF you, or someone you know and love, ever find yourself in the position of having an injury and/or needing physical therapy to return to your busy life, that is!!
Otherwise, I shall go through this PT thing for all of us, (so you don’t have to!!!), and you can continue to be healthy, active, and feeling great!!!!!! That is what I wish for you!! ❣️❣️❣️
😊✨💃🏻✨🏋🏼♂️✨🏃🏾♀️✨⛹🏻✨🚴🏾✨🤾🏼♀️✨😊