What are the methods of joint mobility training?

Passive training that relies entirely on external force, active-assisted training that relies on your own strength and external help, and active training that relies entirely on your own muscle contraction. All fancy variations are just extensions of these three categories.

Think of your joints as the door shafts of units in an old community. They will become rusty if left unopened for a long time. Passive training is equivalent to spraying some rust remover first and asking someone else to help you swing the door to loosen the rust. The most typical example is when the joints are too stiff to move in the early stages of surgery. The rehabilitation therapist will support your legs and slowly bend them to a position where you feel soreness and pulling. Oh, by the way, this part is still a bit controversial in the industry. Radicals believe that small-scale passive movements can be done 48 hours after surgery to prevent adhesion. Conservatives believe that you should wait until the soft tissue has initially grown before touching it to avoid tearing the newly healed wound. The specific choice depends on the degree of your injury and the judgment of the surgeon. There is no absolute right or wrong. I once met a young man who had undergone fork surgery. He heard online that he had to stretch his legs early. On the third day after the operation, he did it himself and loosened the sutured ligaments. He went back for a second surgery, which was a huge loss.

When your muscle strength slowly recovers, you no longer need to rely solely on external force. At this time, you will enter the stage of active assistance. Let's use the door shaft as an analogy. After the rust is loosened a little, you hold the door handle and push hard, and someone else will lend a hand to help you push it. It is much more efficient than blindly pushing yourself. For example, when you find it difficult to hook your foot after an ankle fracture, you should first push it back hard, then put an elastic band on the ball of your foot at the stuck position and pull it back, or the rehabilitation practitioner may give you a little more force to help you walk two more degrees. I have met a little girl who suffered an avulsion fracture of her ankle. When the brace was first removed, her foot could only be hooked to 70 degrees. After a week of practice with this method, it returned to nearly normal 90 degrees, which is much less likely to rebound than a purely passive kick.

When your strength catches up, you can completely do active activities without assistance. At this time, it is equivalent to the hinge of the door being almost rusted. You can turn it on and off by yourself. For example, after sitting for a long time, you can turn your neck and swing your arms. In the later period of knee surgery, you can slowly do squats by yourself. It all depends on your own muscle power to drive the joint movement. At this time, you are practicing not only the range of motion, but also the ability of the muscles to control the joints, so that the angles finally opened will not rebound. Oh, by the way, there is also the joint mobilization technique that is very popular on the Internet. It is essentially a professional operation in passive training. Don’t do it on your own by following the video. An aunt with frozen shoulder used to do it by herself at home according to the video and strained the rotator cuff tendon. Initially, the movement was limited, but later the pain was so painful that she couldn’t even put on clothes, which delayed her recovery.