Rehab and Exercise Programs
At Acu-Chiropractic Wellness Center in Eagan we often recommend specific exercises and stretching programs to help you recover quickly from your injury and maintain your health after you recover.
These programs are an important part of your treatment plan because they work to build strength and stability in order to allow your body to move efficiently and reduce your chances for injury in the future. These corrective exercises or stretches may be done in the office as well as at home. When home exercises are recommended, you may receive a printout of the instructions or a code to enter at www.my-exercise-code.com. This site will give you access to photos and videos of the specific exercises recommended by your doctor.
So why do we need to strengthen some muscles, stretch others, or work on balance and stability? Muscles and surrounding tissues are very good at adapting to the stress that we place on them and become stronger or weaker in response to the load placed on them. For most of us, we don’t challenge our muscles on a daily basis, so they tend to become weaker and less active. We also tend to use certain muscle groups more often than others which set us up for imbalances. If you are sitting at a desk all day, you probably tend to use the muscles on the front of your shoulders and chest more than the muscles on the back of your shoulders. This tends to develop into a posture where the shoulders are rolled forward, the head sits in front of the trunk, and we slouch forward at the hips. When one muscle group is active, the body inhibits the muscles that do the opposite action, so when we are using the muscle group on the front of our shoulders for 8 hours we are also inhibiting the muscles on the back. These muscles weaken, get longer, and become less efficient. This leads to dysfunction and eventually pain.
We can always treat the pain each time it comes up, but by adding exercise and stretching on top of chiropractic we can make changes that last.