Why You Can’t Spot Treat Injuries

One thing you should not do while rehabbing an injury is spot treat it. When I say spot treat I mean focus in on x body part while ignoring everything else. This is a sure fire way to get reinjured. All soft tissue injury results from the body’s inability to safely and effectively transfer force through its kinetic chain. Whether it’s a sprained ankle from playing soccer or a car crash, it all comes down to how well your body can deal with the forces it is encountering. When you get injured your body is telling you it is unable to handle the force from the environment you have placed it in. The goal of injury rehabilitation and prevention should be to get your body prepared to encounter a force greater than the forces you expect to encounter in day to day life (expect the unexpected). When you spot treat an injury, you strengthen one joint while leaving the rest behind. You MUST strengthen the entire chain together. If you have a knee injury and you spot treat the knee, you may relieve pain in the area and think you are “healed”. In fact, now that the knee is stronger, more of a demand will be placed upon your hip and your ankle. Your knee will be able to deal with more force and therefore will expect the rest of your body to keep up. Eventually, after enough time/stress/stimulus, this will result in an injury or pain in another area of the body. It is VERY common for physical therapy patients to “recover” from an injury, only to have another “unrelated” injury shortly after. It is not unrelated in the slightest and is almost a guarantee that this will occur if you do not strengthen the whole kinetic chain. This is why you should never attempt to spot treat an injury. And remember, when the body is compromised, pain is the last thing that shows up and the first thing that starts to go away. Being pain free doesn’t necessarily mean that you are rehabilitated or healed. It’s a good marker of progress but certainly is not the finish line. If you want to heal and stay healed do not spot treat your injuries, treat the entire organism. Each part is interconnected and breaking the body down by pieces while ignoring others all together does not work and results in countless injuries and an unknowable amount of pain. If you want to work with a coach to rehabilitate an injury or get back to living pain free for the foreseeable future, come work with one of our specialists!