Every healthcare office has their method of treating patients – a standardized and systematized order of operations. No matter if you’re in the emergency room (hopefully not), seeing your primary care physician, or seeing a physical therapist or chiropractor, they all have their plan of attack for every patient that walks through the door. This is essential to ensure each provider is addressing every patient concern every time.
Our order of operations – our philosophy – goes above and beyond the typical “pain-relief-only” model many healthcare offices use. We address your pain, help you move better, and then we go one step further to help you create lasting changes through fortifying your stability.
Pain Relief. Mobility. Stability.
This is our philosophy and how we approach each patient’s trial of care. Yes, there are adaptations for each patient, and each patient’s trial of care is unique to them and their goals, but at the end of the day, this is our order of operations we focus on to help each patient feel and move their best both inside and outside of the office.
How does this work? How does this model help every single patient that walks through our doors? Read on to learn how and why our philosophy works every time.
Pain Relief
Although our office does have a focus in movement and performance enhancement, more often than not, people will walk into our office because they are in some form of pain – be neck pain, back pain, shoulder pain, hip pain, knee pain, you name it! – and we can all agree that our goal is to first get you out of pain.
Our aim is to help relieve your pain naturally, without relying on pills or surgery, and regain the freedom to enjoy your life!
This includes a comprehensive exam to dive deep into areas of pain, discover what other factors may be causing your discomfort, and combine our findings with movement and manual therapies to help alleviate that pain.
Most of our tools for pain relief include chiropractic care, soft tissue therapies (like massage, cupping, scraping, or needling), kinesiology taping, and tailored rehab exercises. When used in combination, we work to reduce pain, control inflammation, increase mobility – which ties into the next pillar of our framework!
Mobility
Pain relief and mobility go hand in hand because while we are working to get you out of pain using our modalities (the cupping and scraping and needling, oh my!), we are simultaneously using those modalities to get the tissue and joints moving better, which then helps reduce pain, control inflammation, and increase mobility (sensing the full circle here)??
We also use hands-on mobilization work through whole body stretches and active and passive joint mobilizations to increase mobility both within the joints, and the muscles. The better both our joints and muscles move, the better we feel!
These two pillars work so well together – which is why many chiropractors, physical therapist, massage therapists, etc stick to these two. They work! And truthfully, patients and practitioners can get great results by just focusing solely on pain relief and mobility.
But what would you say if I told you that all of the adjustments and modalities and stretching and mobilizations only help your body feel better for anywhere from 20 minutes to two hours – after that time, the body “lets go” of the changes and returns to its normal. Sometimes this means you are experiencing pain again, sometimes you’re feeling great, but in both instances, your body did not hold onto any changes we made in the office.
So how do we create lasting change if the body has such a terrible short term memory for pain relief and mobility??
That’s where the stability comes into play…
Stability
The nervous system is probably one of the coolest systems in the body. It’s responsible for quite literally everything we do every single
day – even the things we aren’t even aware of! (I promise this brief nerdy detour has a point and it’s gonna be mind-boggling!).
Your body – controlled by your amazing nervous system – is constantly adapting and changing to the world around it. Your nervous system makes these adaptations by simply saying “yes” or “no” to every single input it experiences from how you move, how you stand, what you eat, even what you think!
Sometimes the body adapts well! Sometimes it doesn’t – which can be a cause of pain, discomfort, or functional movement deficits.
At St. Louis Sports clinic, we use your nervous system’s incredible capacity for adaptation to our advantage. We identify, specifically, where your body may not be adapting as well through our exams, functional movement screens, soft tissue work, and joint mobilizations. And we help your nervous system say “yes” to inputs that will help increase its awareness, stability, and strength to the areas we just worked to help move and feel better.
This is accomplished through our detailed rehabilitation progression – tailored to each patient’s needs – through systems like Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization (DNS), Global Rehabilitation and Injury Prevention (GRIP), and other functional strength progressions.
Each of these strength and stability techniques specifically tap into your nervous system to help “save” all of the mobility gained with the hands-on work in the office so your body no longer has the memory of a goldfish, and you can start living and enjoying your life moving well and decreasing your risk for future injury!
All of this to say, getting you out of pain and moving a little better is great, but if we don’t keep you out of pain and if we don’t hold onto the changes we make in office, then you’ll just keep coming back to us in pain or just not moving as well as you should – and that’s not how we roll here.
We want YOU to take ownership of your movement and wellness goals. We take the time to teach you each strength exercise and progression with hands-on coaching so you have the confidence to take them home and continue to improve outside of the office.
The more you help your nervous system to say “yes” to the adaptations we teach you outside of your visits with us, the more confidence you’ll have in knowing how to take care of your body to keep you feeling and moving your best.
