Global reconditioning, also known as exercise reconditioning, is a method designed to restore a person to an acceptable level of physical fitness by physically retraining them.
The aim is for patients to rediscover the benefits of regular physical activity and improve their tolerance of everyday exertion, with a view to improving their quality of life.
This method is aimed at people who are more or less sedentary, or who have become sedentary as a result of illness, injury or the hazards of daily life.
An overall reconditioning programme may be recommended for patients:
When faced with pain, or to protect their bodies from potential pain, patients usually opt for rest.
However, this ‘protective’ reaction to pain leads to a vicious circle for many patients:
This series of negative repercussions accentuates the pain even further, sending patients into a downward spiral.
An exercise reconditioning programme therefore appears to be one of the best solutions for restoring patients' physical capacities, teaching them to practise correctly and safely, limiting the onset of pain, and also teaching them to accept and live with pain.
Global reconditioning sessions can be administered by a physiotherapist or an adapted physical activity instructor. These two professionals, who are experts in these different pathologies and specialise in adapting movement, ensure that they offer individualised exercises tailored to each person's abilities, needs, objectives and desires. They focus mainly on patients' lack of muscular strength and endurance, as well as their poor cardio-respiratory endurance.
In order to achieve the overall reconditioning objective, exercise retraining professionals may recommend purely physical endurance or muscle-strengthening exercises, as well as adapted sporting and/or recreational activities.
To work on endurance, therapists mainly use machines such as exercise bikes, elliptical trainers, rowing machines and treadmills, but can also suggest any other activity (walking, sitting/standing) that causes breathlessness and an increase in heart rate above the resting heart rate.
Machines equipped with weights (legpress, legcurl, pulley, etc.) are often used to strengthen and increase muscular endurance. Exercises using free weights (dumbbell, kettlebell, etc.), elastic bands or any other muscle-strengthening accessory are also very often prescribed by global reconditioning professionals.
Finally, simple bodyweight exercises against gravity are also recommended, as they are simple and effective.
