Fitness and Sports Rehabilitation Center

The fitness and sports rehabilitation centers currently on the market are essentially health service carriers that cover the full cycle of "pre-exercise functional screening - injury prevention during exercise - post-exercise injury recovery". They are neither "specialty clinics" that can only be entered if you are injured, nor are they ordinary gyms that only sell personal training classes and focus on muscle gain and fat loss.

I once met an experienced player who had been practicing CrossFit for three years. He suffered a grade 2 rotator cuff injury. After the hospital took a X-ray, the doctor asked him to rest. He rested honestly for three months. He still felt stuck in pain when he raised his arm, and it was difficult to even lift a 10kg dumbbell.

When we arrived at the center, we first performed an FMS functional movement screening on him, only to find that he habitually shrugged his shoulders and could not lock his core when bench pressing. His upper body swayed throughout the whole process, and all his strength was placed on the rotator cuff. Resting alone eliminated the inflammation, but if he did not change his movement pattern, he would still be injured next time he practiced. The plan given to him was not to rest at all. He would do rotator cuff muscle activation for 20 minutes three times a week each time, then perform low-weight bench press modifications, interspersed with core stability training. In less than two months, he was able to go back to practicing normal-weight deadlifts.

In fact, there are always different opinions in the industry on "who should come first between fitness and rehabilitation?" One group insists on giving priority to rehabilitation. Regardless of whether you have obvious injuries or not, you must first understand all the issues such as posture, compensation, and joint mobility before improving strength. Otherwise, the more you practice, the more serious your injuries will be.； The other group believes that there is no need to be so complicated. Ordinary people do not have so many serious functional problems. They can integrate rehabilitation movements into regular training and adjust while practicing, which is more efficient.

Both of these statements are actually correct. If you really have to choose, it depends on your own situation: if you already have a clear lumbar protrusion, rotator cuff injury, or frequent knee snapping pain, then it is definitely safer to make targeted rehabilitation adjustments first. If you practice hard, you will only turn a small problem into a big one.； If you just sit for a long time and haven't done much exercise, and you don't have persistent pain points, you can adjust it while practicing without having to spend thousands on a month or two of rehabilitation classes.

Oh, by the way, don’t think that everyone who comes here is a gymnast or a professional athlete. Last week, I just picked up a mother who had given birth to a baby for half a year. She usually has rounded shoulders and lower back pain from carrying her baby. I was originally looking for a place to sign up for a yoga class, so I stopped by for a consultation. We didn’t prescribe any high-intensity training plan for her. Each visit included 15 minutes of transversus abdominis activation, 20 minutes of shoulder and back strength training, and the last 10 minutes of fascia relaxation. After two weeks, she said that her waist was no longer sore at all after taking her baby shopping for two hours on weekends, and her shoulders didn’t hurt when she held a 20-pound baby.

There is also a 19-year-old college student who has been playing basketball for 6 years. His meniscus is worn out and it hurts when he squats. He searched for tutorials at home to practice silent squats, and the more he practiced, the more painful he became. When I checked, he found that he habitually buckled his knees in when squatting silently, putting all his force on the meniscus. This was equivalent to practicing in vain and injuring his joints. I adjusted his force generation mode and added hip abduction strength training twice a week, and he returned to play half-time in a month and a half.

Many people will ask when they come here for the first time, your place is more expensive than ordinary gyms, is it worth it?

In fact, there is really no standard answer. If you just want to run and sweat, an annual membership card for an ordinary gym is enough. There is no need to spend this money.； But if you want to solve long-term shoulder, neck, waist and leg pain, or prepare for competitions, or recover after childbirth, or want to practice for ten or eight years without getting injured, then the money spent is definitely much more cost-effective than having surgery or physical therapy if you are injured. There is a saying that we often say in the industry: "It's better to fix the pain when it hurts than to pave the way in advance." Fitness is to strengthen the body, and rehabilitation is to make up for the body's shortcomings. Only by combining the two can you really move comfortably and for a long time.

In fact, we have not set any strict service boundaries for the center. Some people come to practice peach buttocks, some come to treat the sequelae of sprained feet, and some just have stiff shoulders after sitting for a long time at work and want to do fascia relaxation. As long as they are related to "movement", we will take care of all the problems we can solve.

After all, whether it’s fitness or recovery, isn’t the ultimate goal the same? It just allows people to run and jump whenever they want without having their hands and feet tied up by inexplicable pain.