Three Insider Tips for Sticking to Your At-Home Physical Therapy Plan

When your physical therapist gives you an at-home regimen to follow as part of your care plan, you may think adding a few exercises to your daily routine is no big deal. But after a while, it gets easy to make excuses like “I’m too tired” or “I don’t have time today.” Even if you approach your at-home regimen with the best of intentions, it’s easy to start to slack off after a while.

Unfortunately, even missing a few exercises between visits for physical therapy in Napa County, CA can have significant negative effects on your progress. If you want your at-home treatment plan to work, it’s important that you stick to it. When you are committed to following through with your at-home exercises, that’s when you’ll see significant and continued improvement. To help you stick to your at-home physical therapy treatment plan, we’ve put together a few tips:

• Create an end goal: Why are you undergoing physical therapy treatment in the first place? You may want to refer to the specific problem you are facing, but it can be hard to stay focused on a goal such as “improving the range of motion in my shoulder.” Instead, focus on a goal that is related to the quality of life you want or the person you want to be. Choose a goal such as “being able to play with my grandkids” or “getting back to coaching my volleyball team.” When you choose a goal that is very real and important to you, it can help you to stay focused.
• Come up with a strategy: The number one excuse we hear from patients is lack of time. But when you think about the amount of time you spend doing other unnecessary things in your day, finding a few minutes to do your at-home regimen perhaps isn’t so hard—it just takes a plan. A good approach to any new routine is to strategize about what time of day will work best for you. If you stop to think about how you will fit your at-home regimen into your day, you can come up with a plan that you can stick to.
• Be honest: When you’re honest with yourself and your physical therapist about what’s holding you back, whether it be pain, time-management or a lack of motivation, then you and your therapist can approach the problem together. Trust us when we say we’ll find out if you’ve been slacking anyway. Even if it’s not obvious to you, when you come in for your physical therapy in Napa County, CA, we’ll be able to tell if you haven’t been following through with your at-home regimen.

Sticking to an at-home physical therapy plan can be challenging, but the end benefits are well worth the effort. If you’re struggling with sticking to your routine, try out these three tips. If you still need help finding ways to stay committed, let us know. Remember, the team at Focus Forward Wellness & Physical Therapy is always here to help!

Categorised in: Physical Therapy

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