07/08/2025
A lot of rehab professionals still treat movement like it’s dangerous.
They might apply joint or tissue inputs on the table — but then tell the person to avoid exercise altogether, like it’s too risky.
But shouldn’t their intervention build something?
Resilience? Adaptation? Transferability?
If your treatment only works in a quiet clinic room, you’ve only got a few pieces of the puzzle.
Real life — with its unpredictable loads, stressors, and demands — is the missing test.
Intelligent movement is where the system proves what it’s learned.
If it can’t hold up there, did it really change?
And when movement is included, it’s often a generic stick-figure printout with no sensory relevance, no motor learning, and no connection to the person’s actual life. Meanwhile, life keeps applying force. Work, kids, deadlines, bad sleep, dehydration — it all adds load. If the system hasn’t adapted above that level, they’ll keep bumping up against the same threshold.
That’s the SAID principle — Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand. If you’re not gradually increasing the challenge, you’re not building capacity — just hoping the system won’t get tested.
You can’t cotton-wool someone until tissue is “healed” and expect that to transfer into real-world resilience — especially when the pain or restriction was never just about the tissue in the first place.
What if pain is a nervous system output?
– A response to chronic stress
– A reflection of poor sleep
- Dehydration
- Nutrient deficits
- Infections
– The echo of previous injuries
– A motor map the brain no longer trusts
This isn’t just about fixing joints or tissue — it’s about giving the nervous system evidence of safety through intelligent movement, environmental support, and graded exposure.
Movement is a language.
Used well, it tells the system: “You’ve got options again.”
Avoiding exercise isn’t conservative — it’s incomplete.
