ABOUT US & FAQ
Landing here means you’re fed up with the pain and the current system’s ability to handle your condition. Possibly, you’re considering or even scheduled for surgery. Regardless of where you sit on the injury and treatment timeline, it’s time to start taking the steps necessary to increase your mobility and strength, improve your movements, and improve your life.
For almost 2 decades, when family, friends, and acquaintances asked for advice on their aching pains and injuries, I would consult with them and share a random collection of youtube videos attempting to illustrate what I was describing (typically over phone, email, or text). I realized that there was only one way to provide people with the information and content that is true to my description…create it myself!
Despite commonly being delivered to patients as an actual diagnosis, most conditions are typically associated with underlying ineffective movements. These include:
- Low back pain or neck pain from herniated, bulging discs, or stenosis
- Cervicogenic or Tension Headaches
- Shoulder pain from impingement or rotator cuff tears
- Elbow pain from tennis elbow
- Wrist and hand pain from carpal tunnel syndrome
- Hip pain from arthritis
- Knee pain from arthritis or meniscus tears
- Foot and ankle pain from Achilles tendinitis or plantar fasciitis.
The same ineffective movement patterns that put you at risk for injuries and the previously mentioned conditions also set you up for significant underperformance in sports and life. These can include:
- Poor acceleration or speed
- Poor vertical jumping capacity
- Lack of agility or ability for directional change
- Limited lifting, pushing, or pulling strength
The simple performance of your daily activities can be impacted by these problems as well. Osteoarthritis and other musculoskeletal conditions boil down to inefficient and inappropriate movement patterns. Generally speaking, throughout our body, we find areas that either move too much or move too little. These areas of restriction or excess movement lead to undue stress on joints and soft tissues resulting in tissue strain, breakdown, and pain. Movement patterns can cause restrictions and excess movements or the other way around. It truly is a classic chicken or egg type scenario. In order to have a positive long-term outcome from surgery or to avoid it altogether, we must address the movement pattern that led to the problem in the first place.
At Movement Project, we are focused on optimizing your movement for all of life’s challenges. Physical Therapists are the perfect partner in crime because we are THE Movement Specialists in today’s healthcare arena.
If you want to feel, perform, and live your best, you’ve got to move your best…Keep it moving!
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FAQ
To properly answer this question, it’s important to understand that a diagnosis of arthritis comes from a patient complaining of joint pain followed by a radiograph (X-Ray). Based on how the X-ray looks, the diagnosis along with a severity (grade) is given. Believe it or not, many people have joint changes on x-rays and have little to no pain at all(1)! The first question is, do you really care if you have an x-ray diagnosis of arthritis if you have little to no pain and can do all of the things you would like to do in life? Of course not! Unfortunately, once someone hears that they have this “condition”, the label sticks as does a loss of control.
Addressing the underlying movement deficits or muscle imbalances that are causing your joint to wear or become painful in the first place can have a tremendous impact on your pain level, function, and life.
Evidence based recommendations indicate the need for using conservative measure far more commonly than is the standard at this time (2)(3).
In some cases, patients are told that they have crowding of the space in their shoulder which is resulting in impingement of the rotator cuff and bursa. They are often told that they need surgery to open this space and take pressure of the cuff. Studies have looked into this more closely by placing people randomly into 2 groups that either have the complete procedure, or are opened surgically and examined with the arthroscope and then simply stitched back up and sent on their way (gotta love science). After 2 years, guess what? They find no difference in pain or function in the groups! (4)
Another study even looked at Labral tears including the biceps tendon and conducted a similar experiment. 2 years later? You guessed it, no significant difference in the groups. I have to admit, this one even shocked me! This growing data simply reinforces how amazing and effective our body is at mending itself especially when that recovery timeline is paired with a movement specialist to get you back to 100%.
There certainly are some genetic factors that will impact how easily your articular cartilage breaks down like the inherent softness of the tissue. And of course, age plays a role in all conditions. We don’t live forever and our tissues most certainly break down and degenerate over time. Anyone that tells you otherwise is off their rocker. BUT, (you knew that was coming) a vast majority of joint pain that what we see is unilateral meaning it is on one side of the body only. I don’t know about you, but last time I checked, both of my knees came from the same Mom and Dad. I’m also fairly certain that both sides of my body are the same age. Once people understand this simple logic, they tend to jump aboard the rehab train with reckless abandon. My hope is that you will too!