29/11/2023
This post is to vent my thoughts and experiences so I can reflect on this one day and say that I was either right or an absolute idiot.
At uni I was shy and I worried about speaking up, especially when my questions were about challenging the content of what we were being taught. Which was often , and a lot of it was MT based, there was minimal exercise.
Only a little of it sat well with me. This compounded when I graduated, and for a brief moment, I actually thought that I could have 'magic hands'. Either that or physio was a scam.
It was only with time that I realised why my various treatments were a success and what one had to do to ensure high success rates when treating clients.
I've been around long enough to believe things will go full circle regarding our manual therapy (MT) use.
When I graduated TENS was slowly on its way out, and MT became the focus of our treatment.
As new research emerged theraband exercises were added to our treatment plans, that was until resistance exercises were encouraged as superior. Then, gym-based rehab became all the rage. Especially as the biomechanical concepts of MT were debunked.
Then, we took a brief and weird turn to emphasise pain science education until we realised that it was largely ineffective.
And so now we are back, by and large, as a profession heavily relying on resistance training as our main treatment technique.
I think this is a little weird, considering research seems to show that we don't need the physiological changes from exercises to occur to improve most common injuries such as shoulder or back pain.
I personally believe that good treatment is based on rapport building, solid narratives and improving how clients feel about their injuries. Because of this, we can have high success rates with various different approaches.
As a result, I wouldn't be surprised to see the pendulum swing back in favour of utilising manual therapy more commonly with a narrative this time around neurophysiological changes which in turn could help us ironically get more out of exercise.
I already do this commonly, but would love to see some of the naysayers get on board.