What You Feel Matters
When we take a step back and look at human movement from a broad perspective, our body processes the world through three key systems: visual, vestibular, and proprioceptive. This means that how you move provides your brain with critical information about your environment and your body's condition.
When a muscle is injured, its firing patterns change, altering how the brain perceives and controls movement. This is one reason why chronic injuries take so long to resolve—your brain has adapted to compensate, often in ways that reinforce dysfunction.
That’s why the varying sensations of stretch, tension, and contraction you experience are more than just local discomfort; they’re clues about a larger, often overlooked, neurological picture. All of this information is processed by your nervous system, which can either facilitate movement or, more commonly, create barriers by increasing pain sensitivity or muscular tension.
For clinicians, it's easy to get caught up in data and high-tech assessments. But one of the simplest and most valuable tools we have is asking our patients what they feel. Combining this subjective feedback with a solid understanding of biomechanics and anatomy allows us to make more effective treatment decisions—without overcomplicating the process.
What I do:
I like to ask all my clients the same questions during assessments: what are you feeling? Where? Is the contraction or stretch even?
When we do our rehab, same questions related to assessments, when you move or lift, how do you feel things are being loaded.
In combination with what I see, we come to a conclusion of something being effective or not.