If you’re dealing with chronic pain, you probably have firsthand experience with the challenges exercise can bring. Limited range of motion and pain that worsens with movement are two of the most common complaints seen in patients who are dealing with moderate to severe levels of uncontrolled pain. While it’s true that exercise can make pain worse, some exercise plans that have been carefully crafted and approved by your doctor can actually fight pain and improve your mobility. Let’s take a closer look at some of the benefits of functional fitness and how Macomb Pain Management can help you incorporate it into your treatment plan.
What is Functional Fitness?
Functional fitness, at its core, is exercises implemented in a fitness plan designed to help patients improve the movements they are likely to perform in their daily lives. Common examples of real-world movements patients are likely to do include:
- Sitting
- Walking
- Climbing stairs
- Balancing
- Bending the waist
Functional fitness focuses on these movements and incorporates exercises around these movements to help patients relieve their pain and regain the essential mobility skills they use every day. Next, we’ll take a look at how poor movement and decreased mobility can actually contribute to chronic pain.
How Decreased Mobility and Poor Movement Can Increase Chronic Pain Levels
When you’re dealing with chronic pain, you may attempt to compensate for pain that worsens with movement by placing more focus on moving irregularly to avoid aggravating your pain levels. Think of it in the same way that you limp after spraining an ankle. These poor movements can actually do you more harm than good, leading to:
- Weakened stabilizing muscles
- Increased spinal load
- Uneven walk and poor posture
These poor movements can worsen pain by leading to secondary sources of pain, like hip pain, for example, if you are walking with a limp. Functional fitness aims to correct these poor movements to both prevent this from happening and increase your mobility.
How Functional Fitness Can Decrease Pain
We’ve already mentioned how pain can cause us to experience secondary pains from overcompensation, but did you know that functional fitness can actually reduce your existing pain levels as well? Functional fitness focuses on retraining our body’s movements, which can strengthen supportive muscles that may have grown weak, leading to even more strain on the body. Functional fitness helps our bodies learn how to move effectively and efficiently, once again making everyday movements easier and less painful.
Make Functional Fitness Part of a Wider Treatment Plan
While functional fitness exercises can be an excellent tool, we find that patients get the most out of functional fitness when it becomes part of a wider treatment plan. Targeted injections, for example, may be used to block pain signals initially, allowing you to exercise with less pain as you retrain your body’s mechanics. Throughout your pain management journey, your progress will be tracked both in the level of pain you’re experiencing and the gains you make in mobility. Functional fitness, as part of a wider treatment plan, is one tool our team has found highly effective for a range of chronic pain types.
Incorporate Functional Fitness as Part of Your Pain Management Treatment Plan at Macomb Pain Management
Before undergoing any new exercise plan, it’s crucial to consult with your doctor to ensure it will be safe and beneficial for you. Macomb Pain Management can help you develop an effective and safe functional fitness plan for your long-term pain management. To get started, schedule your first appointment today by calling our team at (244) 844-8281.
