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From the Clinic:
Testing vs. Doing
This is something that comes up almost every single day. Most people think getting out of pain is about doing more.
And, they think the magic of physical therapy is the exercises or the hands on treatment. They often want to do more.
More exercises, more stretching and more fixes.
And we get it. If something hurts, you want to start doing something right away.
But this is where people lose time and get frustrated.
Because if you don’t actually know what’s driving the problem, doing more just turns into guessing.
Think about it like this:
If your stomach hurt, and a doctor just handed you medication without asking any questions…
you’d probably feel a little uneasy.
You’d want them to ask:
- What kind of pain is it?
- When does it show up?
- What makes it worse?
Maybe they'd run some blood work or other testing.
Because the solution depends on the problem. Your body isn’t any different.
Where people get stuck is they skip that step.
They go straight to:
- Exercises that work for knee pain (as told by Google or Instagram)
- Things a friend told them
- Stuff that “kind of” feels okay
And sometimes that works.
But more often it looks like:
- You feel a little better… then it comes back
- You keep modifying workouts longer than you should
- You’re doing a lot, but not actually moving forward
A better way to think about it:
Start by testing
What actually changes your symptoms?
What movements matter?
What can you do safely?
Then do less (on purpose)
People are usually surprised that we only give 1 to 2 exercises on a first session. But, it's because we spend most of our time testing and we can now pick one or two exercises that matter the most, rather than 6 that might not move the needle.
Then keep checking
Is this helping?
Are you moving better?
Are we actually trending in the right direction?
Then you build
This is something we see all the time. People make faster progress when they stop trying to do everything and start doing less but doing the right things.
One example, someone came in having a huge list of exercises for their knee pain from another provider and they weren't getting any better. We didn’t give them a long list of exercises. We did a bunch of testing, focused on a few key things, kept adjusting, and they were back to their normal workouts pretty quickly.
Here’s the part most people miss
Every time you guess, you’re not just risking doing the wrong thing, you might be dragging out your pain. Which can mean:
More missed workouts.
More time thinking about it.
More frustration than there needs to be.
The takeaway
If you feel like you’ve been doing a lot but not getting anywhere, it’s probably not a “you need to do more” problem.
It’s usually a “you’re skipping the testing part” problem.
Sometimes doing less at the beginning
is exactly how you get better faster.
If you do end up working with us
If it ever feels like we’re asking a lot of questions, testing a lot of movements, or starting with just a few exercises, that's on purpose.
That’s us trying to find the right answer, not just a quick answer.
Our goal isn’t to give you the most exercises.
Our goal is to give you the right plan so you can get back to doing the things you love as quickly and safely as possible.
-The Team at District Performance & Physio |
