What is Functional Rehabilitation

Functional rehabilitation is the utilisation of exercises that require multiple joints and movements of the body to produce the desired outcome. The exercises used aim to mimic the tasks, movements, and demands of everyday life, which will develop skills and patterns that translate over to your everyday activities. The aim of functional rehabilitation is to help our patients return to, or as close to, pre-injury level strength & function.

The difference between functional rehabilitation & normal exercise is the emphasis on functional movements specific to your individual body patterns and daily activities rather than isolated muscle strengthening, which may focus on movements that don’t necessarily translate into improvements in everyday life.  

Functional rehabilitation takes a more holistic approach to exercise rehabilitation by incorporating multiple muscle groups and joints in ways that mimic your movements in your daily activities. The key difference in functional rehabilitation is in the use of complex movements that aim to incorporate multiple regions of the body. These movements usually have greater requirements in coordination/timing, balance, strength & mobility. The brain must combine all these factors together to produce the desired movement while coordinating and balancing these differing factors. The requirements placed on the body in these movements help to improve the overall capacity you have to deal with the forces and movement requirements in your daily life.

Overall, we utilise functional rehabilitation as it is a patient centred approach that aims to improve your ability to perform everyday tasks by targeting movement limitations in your system and integrating it in a functional program. This approach to rehabilitation can be more effective than traditional exercise rehabilitation, however it comes down to what your individual needs are. Our functional approach allows us the ability to tailor specifically to you and run through either specific exercise rehabilitation programs or functional rehabilitation programs depending on what you require. This gives the best chance to help you regain your functional capacity and return you back to pre-injury level.