You deserve to move, run and dance the way that your body was designed to. Life is not meant to be watched from the sidelines, but sometimes your pain can put you out of the game.
Injuries and pain can be incredibly frustrating, making it very exciting when clients finally find a solution to their pain. I work with clients on a daily basis who get excited when we are able to initially resolve their muscular dysfunction. Unfortunately, I also watch many of their smiles fade as their pain and muscular dysfunction quickly return. I understand this can be disheartening and unfortunately, for some clients, it leads them to believe that the therapy did not work.
This could not be further from the truth. It is important to remember that the biggest part of restoring proper muscular function involves retraining the muscles. For some people, this is a short process. Yet, for others retraining their muscles can take time.
You can compare retraining your muscles to relearning a skill. I am sure many of you can recall practicing a skill for years, but as soon as you stopped practicing you lost your ability to perform as well. Playing an instrument and speaking a foreign language are great examples. You may have played an instrument growing up or taken Spanish classes in college. Unfortunately, once you stopped regularly practicing these skills, your performance decreased.
The same thing goes for your muscles. If a muscle has not been functioning properly for a prolonged period of time, it is going to take time to retrain the muscle to function the way they should.
Injuries, stress, and the duration of muscular dysfunction all play a role in how long it may take to restore proper muscular function. Fortunately, even muscles that have been dysfunctional for years are usually able to be restored within a matter of weeks.
Moral of the story… do not be disheartened when your pain and muscular dysfunction return. This is often part of the recovery process and increasing therapy and the frequency of your exercises will accelerate your recovery rate.