Tire Replacements to Elbow Pain

Vehicles have been on my mind a bit more lately. I had to take my truck into the shop to get my tires replaced. The tread was running low and it was time to upgrade. I decided to also get the warranty for road hazards as well. If you tuned in to last week's email, you are well aware of my recent accident, so the whole process got me thinking about repairs.

Imagine you invested in a vehicle, but every 2 years something pops up and you have to continue to replace the tires. That would be pretty annoying right? Tires are not cheap! It would be easy to blame it on terrible tires, but what if your alignment was off? If your alignment is off you will continue to replace those tires over and over again. This is only addressing the problem at the level of the symptoms! The root cause is the alignment.

I often find myself trying to make connections with everyday life to the things I see in the treatment room. I am always seeking patterns and connection as my passion lies in understanding the bigger picture. This got me thinking of a recent encounter I had as a physical therapist.

I was recently working with a CrossFit coach. We came across a similar situation regarding his movement patterns. He was telling me about his elbow pain, and how it had been bothering him for some time. In this situation it would be easy to go in there and give him a few exercises and take care of the elbow. That would be the equivalent of replacing the tires and not addressing the alignment...

I like to get in depth with my assessments, so we took a look at the hips, the rib cage, the shoulder blades, you name it. His movement profile was biased towards external rotation, but he was severely limited in internal rotation qualities. Internal rotation is important as it is a required motion to help produce force. Any limit in rotation will usually be accompanied by a loss of mobility as well.

We performed a few respiration and mobility drills. This improved internal rotation at the ribs and shoulders. This improved his upper body mobility. He quickly noticed some big changes in how he was feeling. With the remaining time, we focused on the elbow and cleaned up his main complaint to begin with (that part was easy), but the bigger picture was addressed.

The problem with healthcare today is that it takes on a business model. It is all about taking care of symptoms. Here at Revenant Physical Therapy, we like to do hard things. We assess your movement qualities in extreme detail so that we can address the system as a whole. You are not your elbow, your shoulder, or your pain. You are the sum of all the moving parts that make you whole. We love to spend time to break down your movement profile to provide you with a complete picture of where you are and build out a roadmap to where you want to be.