Yesterday, a client told me that her home exercise program took her ninety minutes to finish. She has four exercises from me and a number from her Chiropractor who referred her to me. Which begs the question, “How long should my home exercise program take?”
It depends. Improving health and fitness and rebuilding your entire body takes significant time and effort. Improving knee motion and preventing scar tissue requires effort, working through discomfort, but less time and more frequency. Avoiding certain positions and postures needs constant attention and correction. Undoing years of deconditioning takes daily work with some commitment of time and energy.
I try to focus the home programs I prescribe on giving the most bang for the buck. Trying to get patients to do any work at home much less compliant with a number of exercises in their home program has been a great challenge throughout my career.
I don’t always give patients home exercises. Sometimes I need them to do less. Sometimes I need clients to do much less. I need to decrease the inflammation and cutting their activity level for a few days helps accomplish that goal.
If you want more, ask for more. If you need to cut down the volume, ask which exercises can be cut. Ask yourself how much time are you willing to put into building a better body with more strength, motion, endurance, and less pain. The answer is probably more than 15 minutes. How much work are you willing to put into feeling better a year from now much less 10 years from now?