Rationale for Corrective Exercise

Why is corrective exercise #trending so hard right now? Is it that we are looking to fill a void between injury and recovery? Are we simply introducing a new category of exercise for the sake of generating one? Well to put it out shortly, corrective exercise is a huge component of treating and preventing musculoskeletal injury in a conservative (non-surgical) manner. Since the 1980s, rising costs of healthcare have prompted a need for a change in approach, a paradigm shift, some type of radical transition away from using surgery and medication as the primary source of rehabilitation. Musculoskeletal pain is continuing to rise due to the improvements in automation and technology, leaving many individuals in sedentary positions or performing repetitive tasks.

FACTS

• 33.8% of adults are estimated to be obese
• 18% of adolescents and teenagers considered to be overweight
• plantar fasciitis accounts for more than 1,000,000 doctor visits/year
• low-back pain affects nearly 80% of all adults
• more than 1/3 of all work-related injuries involve the trunk, 60% of which involve the low back
• an average of 9 days of work lost per back pain episode, combining for more than 39,000,000 days of limited activity
• annual costs for low-back pain are in excess of $26 billion
• 6-15% of athletes experience low-back pain per year
• 80,000-100,000 ACL injuries occur per year, 70-75% of these are non-contact injuries
• ACL injuries most commonly affect ages 15-25
• prior episode of ACL injury has strong correlation to later age arthritis in the same knee
• shoulder pain occurs in up to 21% of the population, 40% persists for more than 1 year
• annual costs for shoulder pain in excess of $39 billion
• shoulder impingement (pinched shoulder) is the most common shoulder injury and accounts for 40-65% of shoulder pain
• persistent shoulder pain left untreated can lead to degenerative changes to the shoulder's articular cartilage, tendons, and/or capsular structures

What do we do?

Solve the healthcare conundrum that is plaguing the system with exorbitant medical costs and begin to introduce corrective exercise as an avenue for all fitness and medical professionals to be well-versed in. By being methodical and systematic in our evaluation of an individual during screening, we can correct issues at the front lines rather than wait until injury occurs leaving you out of luck. It is up to us as medical professionals to do our due diligence and obtain the necessary knowledge out there to specialists of functional anatomy, physics, exercise, biomechanics, and interpreting dysfunctional movement. Don't be that dude who goes off the information he learned during PT school (decades old information!). If a PT isn't seeking out current information, chances are he/she isn't doing his job of keeping up with the times. I might question what they actually know about corrective exercise and if they are truly just victims in the corrective exercise gimmick that seem to be flooding the internet. Corrective exercise works, just don't say you know what it is, just to say you know what it is.