The underlying cause of all traumatic musculoskeletal injuries is force absorption. Simply, as a person moves, force transfers into their body. In fact, at all times force is transferring into our bodies because gravity is always working on us. It doesn’t matter if the force is caused from a fall, a hit, or even a car accident. It is still force that is entering the body on multiple vectors. This force must be absorbed properly or an injury is the result. So when force enters our bodies, where does it go?
That is the ‘million dollar’ question. It should enter into a muscle and get recycled. If it does, then the person should be able to continue the activity without an injury. When an injury occurs the force enters the body, but, it is not absorbed by the muscle. It transfers to another area that is not designed as a primary force absorber. This other area is easily overwhelmed by the force and gives out; in a split second, you have an injury. If the force transfers to a bone, you have a fracture. If the force goes to a tendon you get a tendinopathy or a ruptured tendon. If the force goes to the meniscus, you get a torn or frayed meniscus. If it goes to the disc between a spinal segment you have a disc herniation. The force can also transfer to other muscles and yes, cause a strain of that muscle. This is interesting to me because looking at an injury this way it gets your mind off of the injured tissue and on to the reason the injury occurred. If you encounter someone who has a torn Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL); what is their problem? If you ask them, they will point to their knee and tell you their problem is that they tore their ACL. All of their energy is focused on getting the ACL to heal.
Looking at that same injury with the Recover Fast methodology, we see a force absorption problem. The person did an activity where force entered into the body, was not absorbed by the muscle properly and transferred into the ACL. Since the ACL is not designed as a primary force absorber it could not absorb the force and it tore. The next step to this is coming to an understanding that even if you fix the ACL you have not done anything to fix the reason the ACL was injured in the first place. This means that the next time force enters the area it will again transfer to the ACL and re-injure it. Now, I am not saying we don’t need to attend to repairing the ACL, I am just saying that it is only part of the picture.
The whole picture is fixing the damaged tissue and fixing the reason the tissue became damaged in the first place. Not attending to the reason of the injury results in healing that is much slower or, at worst, no healing at all. This process often accumulates resulting in re-injury, increased pain, chronic inflammation, decreased joint range of motion (ROM), and most importantly, the longer the person has the injury the more strength they will be losing. Loss of strength and inadequate ROM leads to a decreased ability to absorb force meaning they will more easily become injured and the rehabilitation of strength will take that much longer.
During Recover Fast rehab, when the reason the injury started is fixed first, via putting the body in balance, the injured tissue practically heals on its own. Remember that the body is an awe inspiring thing that wants to heal, astonishing those that study it and do body-work every day. The only problem is that it knows when it is not fixed and it will compensate to prevent further damage to an injured area. Taking away the reason to compensate will allow the body to do its thing…heal.
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