Why Your Physio is Not Working

Any patient of mine will know that I love an analogy. They are sometimes the best way to simplify a complex biomechanical problem without losing the message I am trying to get across. This is no exception - so I want you to consider your health as a boat out at sea. 

You are trying to get to a destination. This is something you want in life. It could be running that marathon personal best, it could be building a 7 figure company or just spending more time with your family and friends. The conditions out at sea are the things life throws at you. Choppy waters or high winds. They can appear without warning and can make the journey harder. 

Occasionally, they can be severe enough to cause a problem, let’s say a hole in the boat. In this analogy, this is an injury. It stops you in your tracks and instead of continuing towards the destination the boat slows down and starts to take on water. 

So now you need to find a fix. You might hop onto google and search ‘best way to fix a hole in a boat’. You might turn to your partner or friend for advice . Or you could call a specialist to help you - this could be a doctor, physio, chiro etc. 

Here’s where things can go very right, or very wrong. 

Standing in the boat looking around you, you can see the the immediate problem. There’s water around your feet, causing it so slow down and ultimately sink. How do we treat this problem? Easy right, we get the water out.

This is what we often do with injuries. We jump straight to the treatment. We try a ‘the best stretch to fix your [insert injury here]’, or pill, or technique to try and get water out the boat. And sometimes they work, but only for a short while. For a moment there’s less water, the situation is better and the boat stops sinking. But, slowly the issue returns and we need that treatment to shovel some more water out. 

What we need to do is take a moment and figure out where the leak is. We have to look at the entire boat and examine every side, every join for the cause. When we know exactly what’s going on, we can plug it and stop the boat from taking on more water. Only then can we start to shed the water.

So what does this have to do with why physio fails? Because, when it doesn’t work the focus has been to try anything to get the water out. Go to pilates. Have a deep tissue massage. Try acupuncture. The list goes on and on. They are all effective at getting water out of the boat, but none of them stop the problem at source. Only a thorough and holistic assessment of the whole body will show you where it is and what to do.