Timing is Everything

The sequence of events of any outcome is difficult to imagine, let alone recreate. We spend a great deal of time narrating events that have occurred to try to fully understand the environment around us. Patients ask me questions in this vein, questions regarding how they developed their symptoms, or what led to this particular event.

Time is an important aspect of how any patient comes under my care. There are instances where it is the shear amount of time that has led to the current symptoms a patient displays. They have performed the same activity, the same way, for a great deal of time and that has led to tissue exhaustion/pain.

The scenario that is remedied more easily is the one that requires an alteration in the sequence of events. Every time we move, a series of interactions occurs that leads to a particular outcome. There are motions that must take place in order for us to move the ways we choose, if those motions do not happen, compensations develop.

A sufficient amount of time is what allows us to move the way we want to. Your body needs time to make decisions regarding the surrounding environment and how to navigate through it. What lands people in my office, is a loss of time. Patients all too often are moving at a rate that limits their ability to access joint positions and angles that are conducive to fluid movement. They can still accomplish a given task, but at the expense of uniformity. Movements become clunky, and effortful.

The order of operations matters, and the ability to move fluidly through that order requires time. We are all under pressure to get things done, we take short cuts sometimes to be more efficient. If that becomes the norm, compensations are now our primary strategy, and we begin to sacrifice the efficiency we sought in the first place.

Austin Ulrich, Physical Therapist