Biokinetic Blueprint: Say Goodbye to Pain and Hello to the manageable side effects of exercise…

Hello pain, my old friend. This line may resonate with many patients who have struggled with injuries, joint issues, and inactivity for years. But why are we in pain? Pain is a highly subjective phenomenon, specific to each individual. One person's 10/10 pain may be another person's 5/10, and vice versa. The reality of our pain experience is determined by a number of factors, yet the overarching thread is that our individual pain is real and experienced just as we feel it.

In terms of biokinetics and pain, it is generally preferred to not see a patient in pain, as acute treatment can be more challenging. Instead, we would rather allow the patient to subside to a manageable level with other modalities first. Pain can be a significant limiting factor for exercise and making progress with injuries. Our bodies' ability to protect us and our minds' willingness to provide barriers due to pain may not allow us to progress.

Biokineticists are in a position to facilitate a patient's progress in a managed and controlled manner in order to alleviate pain tolerance and build up resilience through stability and strength of muscles to control and stabilize joints. Our muscles are the providers of strength and movement across joints, broadly speaking. While we can't necessarily make tendons and ligaments, 'stronger', we can facilitate muscle strength to help these structures be more secure and protected. The challenge for the biokineticist is to facilitate exercises that help the patient achieve a pain-free zone while building strength and stability in muscles.

Understanding your patient comes from active listening and being able to manage the patient through some manageable pain to achieve the end goal. A biokineticist is only as good as the information they receive and give back.

After attaining an injury and once out of the acute phase, our general basis is to reintroduce function. Muscles have the characteristic of protecting us from causing more pain and detriment. Therefore, retraining can be a time-consuming process, requiring clinical exercises in a moderated fashion in order to regain stability and strength. This can also be said for return to function after surgery. In any surgery, there is generally a protocol in which certain parameters and goals should be reached. These milestones are generally guided by the surgeon and play a major role in recovery to regain most function and allow for "normal" movement.

There is always a way around an obstacle if you can't go through it. I believe this to be the same with rehabilitation and the use of exercise in rehabilitation. The brain has an amazing ability to restructure neural pathways, the little highways upon which we send signals to muscles to perform movement. This ability of the brain allows us to reeducate in some instances and find alternative ways to reproduce certain movements if other avenues were damaged or injured. In saying this, there are ways in which we can exercise other areas, without affecting the main injury or exacerbating pain. The juggling act continues to keep everything working, to get the injury healing, and thus bring about balance to the body, which has been compensating as a result.

Pain does not need to be an inhibitor to exercise, progression, or trying something new. As I have said, there are many ways to overcome pain and finding the right thread to knit the needle may take many tries, yet there are many possibilities. It may not happen all at once, it may not happen instantly, there may be regression, but sticking with the process and being resilient in attaining pain-free movement is worth it.