EXERCISE
Exercise is defined as any bodily activity that enhances or maintains physical fitness and overall health and wellness. In a rehabilitation setting, exercises are prescribed to improve function and reduce pain. There are 4 common types of exercises.
Aerobic Exercise
This is aimed at improving your general health, improving the stroke volume of your heart, and increasing your cardiac output. It is also aimed at improving your muscles’ efficiency in extracting oxygen from the blood.
- Walking/ jogging/ running
- Cycling
- Swimming
Muscle Strength and Endurance
These exercises put the muscle or the bone under a safe amount of pressure, which leads to growth in strength and adaptation guiding you towards recovery. This can help to reduce your pain and guide you towards achieving your goals.
- Resistance training
- Weight training
Flexibility
These exercises keep your joints moving, improving, and easing any joint stiffness. They are aimed at improving the flexibility of your muscle or joint, allowing them to perform a full range of motion to prevent strains, joint pain, or muscle damage.
- Stretching
- Range of motion exercises
Neuromuscular Exercise
This exercise is aimed at improving your “mind-muscle connection”. Through the proper form of performing these exercises, your body learns a more efficient way of contracting the muscle leading to neuromuscular adaptations.
- Balance
- Coordination exercises
The prescription of specific exercises is the bread and butter of the physiotherapy profession.
For an exercise programme to be effective, it has to meet four training principles.
The F.I.T.T Principle of An Exercise Rehabilitation Programme:
Frequency
Intensity
Time (Duration)
Type
Frequency
This refers to how often you’re active and is usually measured in days per week.
Intensity
This refers to the amount of weight or resistance to perform a strengthening exercise or the percentage of your maximum heart rate for an aerobic exercise.
Time
This refers to the duration of an aerobic exercise, the duration of a particular stretch, or the number of repetitions to perform a resistance/weighted exercise.
Type
Refers to the mode of the exercise. Your physiotherapist will cater to the mode of exercise with the consideration of the equipment available to you in your daily life (e.g. choosing between dumbbells, resistance bands, machines, or body weights to perform the exercise). How this is accomplished is based on another set of principles on training.
Specificity:
The exercises prescribed by a physiotherapist are individualized and specific to address your issue and achieve your goals.
Overload:
For positive adaptations of the body to occur, there should be an appropriate amount of stress placed on the exercise. Your physiotherapist will prescribe the appropriate amount of overload in an exercise for you (e.g. appropriate amount of intensity that stresses the particular muscle but not at a level where it causes too much pain for you to perform the exercise).
Rest:
Optimal adaptation will require the right amount of rest and recovery. Your physiotherapist will advise accordingly, and provide recovery exercises such as stretches to facilitate your recovery.
Variation:
The exercises performed during your rehab sessions will be varied to prevent overtraining, injury, and hitting a plateau. Our physiotherapists are highly trained in these training principles and will devise an exercise programme using these principles to deliver the best results for you.