The Road to Recovery - and its highs and lows
In all aspects of injury rehab, progression is never linear. While it may be nice to have consistent progress, consistent decreases in pain, consistent increase in strength and performance, this almost never happens. And for a reason. I believe that there is power and a greater ability to impact progress and growth due to the undulating upward nature of injury rehab. But first why is this important for you and your injury rehab journey? The process of recovering from injury, ACL surgery, chronic back pain, knee pain, acute muscle strains, etc. is a process of re-calibration for all of the body's systems. Your nervous system, musculoskeletal system, lymphatic system, respiratory system, digestive system, nervous system, etc all have to adjust to the relative changes that are being inflicted and that have accrued due to the injury in the body. With this you should expect that the addition of physical therapy, exercise, and specific performance measures should overall help your injury. Therefore you will see an overall upward trend from when you initiate your chosen intervention, till when you conclude it.
What is frustrating for most along the way is that you will have moments where your pain and symptoms will increase, and your strength, feelings of success, and overall recovery will decrease. This is expected. This is where upward undulation, or “undulating upwards” comes in. I define this as an upward trend with undulating or “up and down” patterning. As your body's systems work to recalibrate there is a lot at work. Your nervous system is working to understand what is a good stress to the body and what is harmful, what is of concern and what is not. Your circulatory system is working to provide inflammatory responses when it is actually needed and not in error, and your hormones are recalibrating to not initiate stress responses with new movements patterns. These are just a few examples of what is at work here. What is powerful about this process is actually the lows you experience, and not the highs. The lows will allow you to develop threshold. Here is where you can see to what capacity has your body recalibrated to the relative stress you are putting on it. It gives you data to understand if your recovery modalities are too much or not enough, and reminds you to take your time and breath as you heal. It also lets you know that while you may be on the low end of undulation, a spike in performance, a decrease in pain, and an improvement in your movement is right around the corner.
You may spend a lot of time in the lows before you hit a spike. This is also normal. Things will feel uncomfortable, you will be challenged, and it will be inconsistent. You have to remind yourself that the process takes time and you will get better. Focus on yourself and do not compare your road to recovery to someone else's. Your body’s systems, and your genetic makeup is different from theirs.
What you can expect is the overall upward trend. Constantly reflect and look at where you are at, and where you use to be. If you can look back and find one improvement from the start of your journey to your current state, you are on the right track. If you are struggling to find this, allow yourself some more time, put in more work, seek expert opinion and then re approach this question. Don't let the lows stop you from putting in time and work that could yield extreme amounts of success in the future on your road to recovery.
