This depends on the type of injury that you’ve sustained. Often, but not always, a period of rest from sports or activities is necessary to speed up your overall recovery. Examples of injuries where this is certainly the case include muscle tears and ligament strains. Other injuries, such as spinal complaints like neck and lower back pain, are likely to benefit from continued gentle exercise during your physiotherapy. This is contrary to the popular belief that your back should be rested when it’s injured. With rheumatic conditions such as osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis there is likewise often benefit in remaining active to a degree. Finding a balance between optimum levels of rest and exercise is believed to be the key to effective management of such conditions.
Similarly, with many neurological conditions, such as stroke, Parkinson’s Disease or multiple sclerosis there is merit to remaining active throughout your physiotherapy. Indeed activity and exercise may make up much of the therapy for such patients.
So you may have to stop exercising or sport, while you’re having physiotherapy or you may not. Your chartered physiotherapist, will give you advice on this based on the type of injury that you have and the perceived benefits of rest versus remaining active. Remember most physiotherapists are interested in sport, with many being keen sports participants. They understand the distress caused to athletes by absence from their sports. They will only recommend stopping your sport for a period if it is absolutely necessary and will keep your time off sport to a minimum insofar as that’s possible.