Injury and Motor Engrams. We’ve experienced injuries at some point in our life. Whether it’s a broken bone, a sprain, a stub toe, whatever your story is, it\’s the same procss to your body, varying only in severity. Initially there is pain, and that pain causes us to move away from it. So let’s just say you stub your toe. You limp around a little bit finding you can’t put weight on that foot for a while, and pretty soon it goes away. Well the pain goes away, but the dysfunction has now begun. Your body has found a new way to walk because your body now believes that the position in which you stubbed your toe is not a safe position. You begin to lose strength and coordination because your toe is no longer accessing that position, you truly must use it or you lose it. It is quite common to have discomfort in the joints above the foot following a \”healed\” foot injury. That’s because once you had that initial pain, that initial stressor, you completely changed your Motor Engram. Your body changes the way it functions, and in this case the way you walk, to avoid pain which is good because we need to continue to move and we need to continue to survive. However, once the initial trauma has healed we need to go back, and we need to reprogram. What has happen is you have essentially programed a limp into your system. The exact second you hurt that toe, your brain said \”The way we were walking is no longer efficient, because it causes pain, let’s find a new way\”. That new way is a temporary pain reliever, but if left uncorrected, creates problem higher up in your body. If you don\’t restore the strength and range of motion to the toe you\’ll end up with a knee or hip problem down the road. Take a look at yourself, look at your injury history, and really think about how that may affect how you feel now. How your body works now. Know that it’s never too late, it’s never too late to change, and it’s never too late to improve these engrams. It’s just a program. It’s just a bunch of nerves in your brain that have decided that this is the most efficient way to move. The more you move in a different way, or hopefully in a rehabilitative way, the more you’re going to change that neural net by telling your brain, \”This is how we move. This is the most efficient pattern.\”
I think too often people are giving into their pain, or accepting that this is how life\’s going to be
come back next week for more…
