Written by: Dr. Janine Nesin, PT, DPT, OCS & Co-Owner
“Load is our love language” – Institute of Clinical Excellence.
How could anyone think of load as a love language? Well…we are physical therapists, and so we see things a little differently.
What does that mean?
Believe it or not, load helps us grow stronger, recover from tissue injury, and helps prevent future damage. By load, we mean anything that makes the body work harder or move more. Whether bone, muscle, tendon, ligament, or cartilage, the human body has a remarkable ability to adapt to the stresses placed on it, and the inflammatory cycle is a driver of that break down/build back stronger process. You lift weights, end up a little sore for the next 1-2 days, the soreness then dissipates and you do it again. And low and behold, in a month, you notice you can lift more, and that muscle looks a little more defined in the mirror. Or you run/walk for 20 mins one day, and you swear you must be dying with each stride you force yourself to take. Your knees are a little stiff the next morning, and your quads are SO sore. But you stick with it and a month later, you are able to run the entire 20 mins without feeling like your lungs are going to explode and legs fall off. Welcome to the enormous benefits of the body building back stronger part of the equation!
With activity our heart and tissues get stronger, our brain learns and releases positive neurotransmitters, our lungs become more efficient, our immune system strengthens, and our risk of heart disease, cancer, and diabetes and a host of other deadly diseases is reduced. Sounds like love to me!
So, inflammation isn’t the villain, it is the body adapting by removing pathogens and bringing growth factors and cytokines to build our tissues back stronger. Where we get into trouble is when the breakdown outpaces the body’s regenerative capacity, when we increase the load too quickly, do the same motion over and over without changing it up (repetitive motion), or with sudden external force the body can’t control (traumatic injury). Traumatic injuries are generally beyond anyone’s control, but how to prevent the others is a matter of scaling that load safely and varying the activity, that’s where your PT can help guide you through that process. Either way, as our favorite PT mentor, Cheryl Wardlaw, always says, “Any injury sustained during exercise is always better for your body than the slow rot of inactivity.”
If you are injured, get in to see NesinFIT quickly so we can help you recover and get back to it as soon as possible. It really is our love language… We simply love to help people get moving!
