Warming Up a Muscle or Joint is Different Than Effecting True Change

It’s easy to be misguided by immediate results from an intervention, whether the intervention is movement or something else like heat. For example, if we do 20 knee extensions in semi-loaded and you gain significant range in your obstructed knee flexion, that could be due to a few factors. One, I am just “warming up” the knee joint (or whatever structure(s)) so now we get more mobility. Meaning, if we do anything that moves the knee a lot, we’ll get more flexion. Or, two, extension in semi-loaded is truly the specific, necessary exercise for this knee to unlock flexion.

There are ways to answer this inquiry. For one, if we then wait several minutes with the knee resting, we can re-test flexion. After resting, if the gains remain, it’s less likely the factor was simply being “warmed up.” Similarly, if the person does that extension exercise over a few days at home, we should see improved flexion out of the gate (when “cold”) on the next visit. And, if we do a separate knee exercise 20 times and flexion does not improve or worsens, then we know there is something special about semi-loaded knee extension for this particular knee.

It’s not uncommon to see great changes in the clinic that don’t hold up over several days of repetition. That’s fine. It was prescribed as a home program to see the effect, not as a cure. That response tells us a lot of information regarding diagnosis and what to do next. But don’t persist if you see any type of positive change that, over time, just doesn’t stick. Sometimes that simply means the positive change that initially occurred was due to a general “warming up” phenomenon. Now look for the intervention that can create lasting positive change. --Laura