At Anatomical Concepts, we look to other fields for insight and inspiration that we can bring to rehabilitation. For example, elite athletes like our rehabiliation clients will set training goals, undergo rigorous physical training and adhere to strict plans to achieve peak performance. This article explores the potential benefits of applying the principles of elite athlete training to help individuals recover from neurological conditions.

In this first article in the “Bridging the Gap” series of articles, I want to encourage you and I to start thinking about motor training for physical rehabilitation as if we were training an elite athlete.

In these articles, we have looked at strength and conditioning training to see if this more familiar territory might give us a structure with which we might approach training for neurorehabilitation. In this final article we have introduced the important of rest and recovery. The best results from training are achieved when there is an optimal balance between the training dose and rest and recovery. This has many unknowns but we can rely on the vital importance of sleep hygene, nutritional status and maintaining. as far as possible, low levels of negative stress.

In this article, we explore the second most important training principle from strength and conditioning which considers the “Dose” of training - in other words the Volume, Intensity and Frequency of training. We look at how these factors relate to neurorehabilitation and learning.

Neuroplasticity and neurogenesis are topics that inspire hope of recovery for many following a neurological condition. How do we bring hope into reality? Forms of movement, technology, and frequent, intensive exercise promise to assist recovery even if goal setting remains a challenge. This article looks at all of this as another form of training and suggests that adherence to a programme must be fundamental to success.