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It’s common to have some reservations about physical therapy, but you should never be scared or afraid to attend your physical therapy sessions. In fact, if you’re going to fear anything, you should be afraid of what could happen if you skip out on your essential recovery exercises. With that in mind, we wanted to take advantage of the spooky season and highlight seven things that are more frightening than attending your physical therapy sessions.

Why You Shouldn’t Fear PT

There’s really nothing to be afraid of when it comes to physical therapy. You’ll follow a carefully crafted rehabilitation routine under professional guidance to ensure you continue to make progress without increasing your risk of a setback. What you should be afraid of is what’s at stake if you opt not to attend PT. Here are seven things that could happen if you skip PT, and why they are more frightening than any physical therapy session.

  1. Reinjury – If you don’t work to restrengthen an area after an injury or surgery, your risk of reinjury will remain elevated. Nobody wants to go through a rehabilitation program once, let alone twice because they aggravated their injury down the road because they never fully recover from the initial issue.
  2. Lost Athletic Performance – You owe it to yourself and your teammates to make the strongest recovery possible if you’ve been sidelined after an injury. If you don’t give it your all during your PT sessions, you may never get back to a pre-injury level of athletic performance, and nobody wants to realize their best athletic days are behind them. Use PT to get back to a pre-injury level of fitness or even become stronger than you were prior to the injury.
  3. Lost Independence – For older adults, failure to partake in a rehab program can mean that they will need more help from others to perform daily tasks. Nobody wants to lose their independence, but it can happen if you don’t take rehab seriously after something like a fall or a joint replacement procedure.
  4. Chronic Pain – If muscles, ligaments or joints remain weak following an injury or surgery, other areas of your body may have to take on more stress to account for this weakness. This can speed up degeneration in other parts of your body or lead to the development of new or chronic discomfort. Help your injured area get back to pulling its own weight to reduce the risk of chronic pain developing in the area or in a nearby structure.
  5. Sedentary Life – Injuries or major surgeries oftentimes force us to be a little less active than we’d like to be for a short period of time, and if we don’t help our bodies recover from these issues, inactivity can become the norm. You love to move, and so does your body, so help it heal so that you can keep moving and continuing to pursue those physical activities that you love the most.
  6. Body Breakdown – You only get one body, so you owe it to yourself to do everything you can to help it stay healthy long into the future. You can’t just trade it in like you can a car, and physical therapy is akin to taking your car into a mechanic when a problem develops. Ignoring a problem only typically makes it worse, and because you’re stuck with this model for life, you need to do what you can to maintain it. Don’t let a major issue develop because you put off some simple maintenance.
  7. Lost Confidence – Finally, we’ve talked with many clients who speak about how they’ve lost confidence in certain areas of their body because of injuries or lingering issues. Some people have stopped running because of ankle instability, or they’re afraid an overhead motion will cause problems for their rotator cuff. Don’t go through life shying away from certain actions because you’re unsure if your body can handle the movements. Instead, pursue physical therapy and overcome these issues so that you can regain confidence in your ability to perform these actions with ease. Losing confidence in your physical abilities is an issue that can be countered by pursuing a professional PT program.

As you can see, there’s a lot more you need to fear when you skip out on your physical therapy sessions. Let us show you that you have nothing to be afraid of and let’s work to help you become the healthiest version of yourself. For more information, or for help with a different physical issue, reach out to the team at OrthoRehab Specialists today at (612) 339-2041.

Dr. Andy Masis, PT
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