PATIENT GUIDE
The Complete Adelaide Guide to Getting Real Relief From Pain and Injury, Without Endless Sessions
From the PhysioXtra team · Treating Adelaide and the South Coast since 1996
Most people who come to us have already tried something else. Usually several things.
They have taken anti inflammatories. They have tried the exercises from a YouTube video or a sheet handed to them at a previous appointment. Some have been to a chiropractor, a massage therapist, or another physiotherapist, and have gone to a lot of appointments without much changing.
By the time they book with us, the question is not really “what is wrong with me”. It is “why has nothing worked yet”.
This guide answers that. It covers when to see a physiotherapist, why pain persists, what effective treatment actually involves, how to tell whether your rehabilitation is working, and what to ask before you commit to a course of anything.
When should you see a physiotherapist?
Sooner than most people do.
The common pattern is to wait, on the reasonable theory that most aches resolve on their own. Many do. The problem is that the ones that do not become progressively harder to treat, because the body compensates around them.
You start moving differently to protect the sore part, other structures take load they were not designed for, and six weeks later there are two problems instead of one.
Also worth booking: a problem that keeps returning.
A shoulder that has gone three times, or a back that goes every winter, is not bad luck. It is an unresolved cause.
Book an appointment if any of these apply
WHY NOTHING HAS WORKED YET
Why pain persists
Three reasons account for most of it.
The cause was never found
Pain is often felt somewhere other than where the problem is. A knee that hurts is frequently a hip that is not doing its job. A neck that aches is often a mid back that has stopped moving. This is the single most common reason people have had months of treatment with nothing lasting. The treatment was fine. It was aimed at the wrong place.
The tissue healed but the function did not
After an injury, tissue repairs on a fairly predictable timeline. Strength, control and confidence do not come back on their own. A body that has been guarding a joint for eight weeks has genuinely lost strength around it, and that loss is what makes the next injury likely.
The load never changed
If the thing that caused it is still happening, whether that is a workstation, a training load, or a way of moving, the problem returns as soon as treatment stops.
What effective treatment actually looks like
It has four parts, and skipping any of them is where most treatment fails.
A proper assessment
Not five minutes and a guess. A physiotherapist should watch you move, test the structures around the painful area as well as the painful area itself, and be able to tell you in plain language what they think is happening and why.
30 minutes Every appointment, not just the first. Fifteen minutes is enough to treat a symptom. It is not enough to assess, treat, explain and progress.
Hands-On Treatment
Manual therapy has fallen out of fashion at a lot of clinics, replaced by an exercise sheet. We think that is a mistake. Joint mobilisation, soft tissue work, muscle stretching, neural mobilisation and dry needling reduce pain and restore movement in the session.
A joint that moves better can be strengthened, and one that is stiff and painful cannot.
Hands on work is not the whole treatment. It is what makes the rest of it possible.
Exercise that is actually specific to you
The exercises that fix a problem are the ones aimed at what your assessment found. Generic core exercises given to everyone with back pain will help some people and do nothing for others, and there is no way to know which you are without an assessment.
Measurement
This is the part almost nobody does, and it is why people end up in endless sessions. If nobody is measuring anything, the only way to judge progress is how you feel, and that varies day to day for reasons that have nothing to do with your injury.
We use sports diagnostic and strength testing equipment, the same technology used with elite athletes, to measure strength, symmetry and function. It tells you when you are actually ready to return to sport, rather than when you feel ready.
How to tell whether your rehab is working
Ask three questions.
What are we measuring, and what is the number now?
If nobody can answer, nothing is being tracked.
What should be different in three weeks?
A physiotherapist should be able to tell you what they expect to change and by roughly when. If it does not change, that is information, and the plan should change too.
What happens when treatment stops?
The goal is not to keep seeing a physiotherapist. It is to leave with the strength and the strategies not to need one. If nobody has mentioned an end point, ask.
What we mean by everything under one roof
Recovery from most problems needs more than a treatment table.
Our clinics house physiotherapy, clinical Pilates, hydrotherapy, a physio led gym, podiatry, dietetics, remedial massage and advanced testing in the same building. For some locations that also includes Lokomat and Armeo robotic rehabilitation technology.
That matters for a practical reason rather than a marketing one. When your physiotherapist can walk you into the pool, put you into a clinical Pilates class, and progress you into a supervised gym programme, the whole pathway is joined up and everyone involved has read the same notes. When those things happen in three different buildings, they are three different opinions and nobody is coordinating them.
Clinical Pilates is not the same as a Pilates class
Worth being clear about, because the words are used loosely.
Clinical Pilates
Prescribed by a physiotherapist as part of a treatment plan, based on your assessment. Usually claimable through private health. It is treatment.
Pilates class (PilatesX)
Group reformer classes run by our sister brand inside several of our buildings, for when you are ready for the fitness version.
Concussion
Concussion is a specific case and it deserves its own paragraph, because the advice that circulates about it is often wrong.
If someone has taken a knock to the head, they come off, and they do not go back on that day. That is not caution, it is the standard.
A concussion affects five domains, and a proper assessment tests all of them rather than asking whether the person feels alright. Return to sport should follow a graded plan with defined stages, not a guess about how long feels reasonable.
We assess concussion same day at our clinics and we work with sporting clubs across South Australia on return to sport protocols. For persistent symptoms beyond the acute phase, particularly ongoing dizziness or visual disturbance, that is specialist vestibular territory and our colleagues at NeuroPhysio handle it.
What to ask before you commit anywhere
What do you think is causing this, in plain language.
What will you measure, and what is the number today.
How long is an appointment, and is every appointment that length or just the first.
What is the plan if this is not better in three weeks.
What does the end of treatment look like.
Any physiotherapist worth seeing will answer all five without hesitating.
Where to start
We offer same day appointments across our locations, at Marion, Norwood, Pirie Street in the CBD, Hallett Cove, Seaford, Victor Harbor and the PhysioXtra Rehab Centre. Every appointment is 30 minutes. Private health, Medicare with a GP referral, and NDIS rebates all apply, and there is free parking at every clinic.
If after your first consultation you are not confident we can help, we refund the session fee.
Call (08) 8357 4988 or Book Appointment.