I had a call yesterday with someone dealing with ankle pain from a torn ligament. The issue had been going on for longer than a year.
He was currently in rehab, doing typical rehab things. And he had some fears around rein-jury since its happened a couple times, and
Nothing in rehab was giving him the confidence to squash those fears
One goal was to return to sport, namely Ultimate (frisbee).
Fun fact - Frisbee is a “propriety antonym” for flying disc. Frisbee is the name brand. That’s why the sport is called “Ultimate” and Disc Golf is not called Disc Frisbee.
Anyway, to explain my point I have to give some background.
Kobra and I have been in sports our entire careers, and rehab there looks different. What a lot of rehab gets wrong is they think return to sport rehab has to LOOK like the sport
swinging a heavier baseball bat
whatever IG videos Lebron James is doing
whatever dumb “golf” shit this is suppose to be
The goal of rehab is not the sport itself. That’s skill work and the job of the SPORT coach (i.e., basketball/soccer/golf/etc coach)
The goal of rehab is to PREPARE you for the forces you experience IN YOUR SPORT.
For Ultimate (Frisbee) and most sports, the forces are typically tasks that involve stopping and changing direction
Here’s a perfect example with this MJ video
He goes full speed then STOPS to change direction, jumps for the shot, the land from the shot. That’s 3 DIFFERENT changes of direction in 10 seconds.
(good luck doing that with theraband)
Those are the specific return to sport items you need to work on and you
Need to start them as soon as you can tolerate them
Back to the original point:
There’s progressions to these activities, but most standard PT clinics don’t know them since they don’t work with athletes
and the end goal is not in mind
They’ll spend 2-3 months on band work and step ups then send you back out to the field ill prepared physically AND mentally to play.
So you give up.
Back to my call, I gave him one simple questions to ask his PT.
“Whats the plan look like for me to return to Ultimate (Frisbee)?”
you can sub out “ultimate” for whatever your goal is.
They should be able to lay out the PLAN to get you back to your goal. The timeline will be an estimate (+/- 2-4 weeks), but the phases you go through should be consistent. Someone that had surgery may spend longer in the beginning phases than someone that did NOT have surgery.
I know what you’re thinking,
“But I don’t play sports”
True, but you CANNOT escape the forces.
Wanna run, jump, and throw your kids?
Walking down stairs. Hiking?
All of these things require you to
absorb force
change direction
(Good) Sports rehab translates to normal life.
Normal life rehab DOES NOT translate to sports.