What is muscle re-education?
Muscle re-education is a way of retraining your body to perform normal movements. It includes training both the muscles and nerves because they work together to make your body move. Because of that connection, it’s also known as neuromuscular re-education.
This re-education technique trains the nerves to properly send signals to the muscles about when, where and how to move, so that your muscle can do its job. The process builds muscle memory — the everyday movement patterns your body learns and stores to duplicate over and over.
What do neuromuscular re-education exercises help with?
Nerve and muscle damage can sever the connections that your neuromuscular system relies on to signal movement. The muscle movement patterns are hindered or completely lost. This can happen after some sort of trauma, major surgery, neurological condition or medical issue, including: stroke, hip replacement, knee replacement, osteoarthritis and osteoporosis.
Muscle re-education is essential in helping you recover from these serious health issues and diseases that limit function. It’s also a unique and effective program for other common health problems:
- Pain
- Faulty gait or movement patterns
- Poor posture (posture education may use muscle re-education)
- Balance issues
- Stability issues
- Weak muscles
- Stiff joints
- Pelvic floor dysfunction
What can I expect from neuromuscular re-education physical therapy?
Each neuromuscular re-education program is unique. Your PT will individualize your therapy to your condition, the affected muscle (or muscle group) and your overall health goals. The exercises will challenge your muscles and mind as you practice basic muscle control. Your program will likely include a wide variety of the many techniques physical therapists have in their toolkit, including manual therapy, balance exercises, therapeutic exercise, and stabilization.
In combination, these techniques reteach all of the muscles, nerves and connective tissue involved the correct timing for muscular control as well as the fine and gross motor skills needed to execute a movement. It’ll take several appointments and practicing repetitive motions in the physical therapy clinic and on your own. Your PT may also try electrical stimulation to help connect the muscles and nerve signals.
Slowly but surely, you’ll improve the communication and coordination needed to move your muscles properly again. Once your function and muscle memory returns, your physical therapy or activity can progress to full range of motion exercises, muscle strengthening and more rigorous levels of training.
What results will I see from muscle re-education?
The primary goal of neuromuscular re-education is for your injured or affected muscle to restore its previous muscle memory and function. An effective program led by a trained physical therapist can also help:
- Reduce pain in muscles and joints
- Increase stability and function in joints
- Improve overall health and quality of life
- Prevent bone loss and fracture from osteoporosis or reduced risk of falls
- Increase aerobic capacity
Muscle re-education is just as useful a prevention tool in rehab and recovery. If you never overcome the initial tenderness, reduced range of motion, inflammation and instability after surgery or injury, you could face long-term movement disorders.