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acl reconstruction

May 23, 2023 · In: Injuries and Surgeries, Science-Backed Education

ACL Stability: How to Improve Strength for Return to Sport

One of the most common injuries of the knee involves ACL injuries. Your ACL (anterior cruciate ligament), along with many other ligaments, provides stability to your knee. When the ACL…

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resistance band rehab exercises

March 7, 2023 · In: Movement, Strength for Resilience

5 Best Shoulder Strengthening Exercises for Healthy Movement and Stability

When it comes to shoulder strengthening exercises, physical therapists want to target the specific muscles that are weak. While weak muscles may differ from person to person, there are certain…

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Meet Tera

Meet Tera
hi friends!

I'm a practicing physical therapist based out of sunny SoCal who loves to educate others and share information and knowledge. You can typically find me hard at work trying to manage normal life or cuddled up under a blanket enjoying coffee or desserts I can never seem to get away from!

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Featured Posts

Woman in athletic wear sitting on a yoga mat, pausing rather than working out, representing rest as part of consistency

Can’t Stay Consistent With Exercise? It’s Not a Discipline Problem

Woman sitting quietly on a couch in soft natural light, deciding whether to do active recovery or take a full rest day

Active Recovery vs Rest: How to Know What Your Body Actually Needs

Woman with chronic pain considering whether to exercise

How Exercise Helps Chronic Pain Without Making It Worse

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The label got attached to slow yoga, easy walks, a The label got attached to slow yoga, easy walks, and gentle bike rides. Active recovery became a category of workouts.

But the label is doing the wrong job. What makes movement “recovery” isn’t the modality. It’s whether your body finishes with more capacity than it started with.

A 20 minute walk can be active recovery on a Monday and a workout your body can’t handle on a Wednesday. It’s the same walk on a different day with a different answer.

The thing most of us are missing isn’t a better workout schedule. It’s a daily look at what your body can actually hold. Some days, that assessment points to movement. Some days, it points to rest. Either one, when it’s used at the right time, it supports the body. When used at the wrong time, it makes things worse.

If you want help learning to read your body signals, comment SIGNALS for the free nervous system workbook.

#activerecovery #pushcrashcycle #listentoyourbody #nervoussystemregulation #chronicpainmanagement
This pattern was mine for years. And if your weeke This pattern was mine for years. And if your weekend looks anything like the one I am about to describe, you already know how Sunday night feels.

Rough week, exhausted by Friday, on the couch all weekend hoping to reset. Sunday night, I would be more depleted than when I started with nothing prepped for the week ahead. And the conclusions running through my head about what kind of person I must be to keep ending up here did not help.

The fix I always reached for was discipline…more structure, more consistency, and more grit. The crash kept coming anyway.

What moved the needle was learning to read what my body could hold, day by day. Some days a workout, some days a walk, some days a couch Sunday was the choice. The decision was made each morning, based on what was actually there.

If you want help learning to read the signs and what to do for them, comment SIGNALS and I will send you the free nervous system workbook.

#chronicpain #chronicfatigue #nervoussystemhealth #painscience #listentoyourbody
If by Wednesday you are already running on fumes, If by Wednesday you are already running on fumes, this one is for you. I called myself undisciplined for years.

Every Sunday night I would land on the same conclusion: more structure, more consistency, and more grit. That was the fix. And every Friday I would crash anyway.

Here is what I did not know about the cycle.

Both doors lead to the same room.

Door one is push. The body sends signals about what it can hold that day. Discipline overrides the signal. Push past the signal once, you crash once. Push past it for a year, you live in the crash.

Door two is rest. The week was rough so the weekend is for resetting. You sit Saturday hoping it works. Sunday comes and you feel worse, so you rest again. By Sunday night nothing is prepped and you are still depleted. The week starts in deficit, so you push harder to catch up, and the crash arrives by Friday.

Different doors. Same room. The room is the cycle.

The missing piece was never more discipline. It was a daily read on what my body could hold and the willingness to let the read be the decision instead of overriding it.

Some days the body can hold a workout. Some days a walk. Some days a couch Sunday is the work. The decision gets made each morning, based on what the body is signaling that day.

If you want help learning to read your own signals, comment SIGNALS for the free nervous system workbook.

#nervoussystemregulation #nervoussystemwork #burnoutisreal #lıstentoyourbody #reclaimyourenergy
is treating movement like it only has two settings is treating movement like it only has two settings.

Keep training like nothing happened or do absolutely nothing.

This is where we need a little more nuance, because if you’re doing your normal gym routine, hikes, runs, or workouts and your pain keeps increasing, something is swelling, you’re limping through it, or you keep changing how you move just to get through it, that is your cue to scale back.

Not because you’re weak or because you ruined everything, but because your body is trying to do its job and constantly irritating the area can drag the whole process out longer than it needs to.

The body is made to heal, but it needs the right environment to do that.

On the other hand, being injured does not automatically mean you need to sit around for two to three weeks doing absolutely nothing until it magically disappears.

If you hurt your shoulder, maybe bench pressing and shoulder presses are not the move right now. But can you train legs? Can you walk? Can you modify the range of motion, load, tempo, or exercise choice? Most of the time, yes.

That middle ground is where a lot of people get stuck.

They either push through because they don’t want to lose progress or they stop everything because they don’t know what else to do.

But injury rehab usually lives somewhere in the middle. It is figuring out what still feels safe, what does not increase symptoms, and what allows you to stay active without poking the bear every single day.

Pain is information, but it is not always a stop sign.

You are not broken, but we do need to be smarter about how you’re moving while your body heals.

Save this for the next time your brain tries to convince you that your only options are “push through it” or “do nothing.”

#movementismedicine #injuryrehab #injurymanagement #stayactive #worksmarter
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