Our body is literally hardwired to want to regenerate under load. So that's why this is really important.

Performance tech is everywhere, but here's the uncomfortable truth. Most clinics don't have a tech problem. They have a decision-making problem. Welcome to The FAKTR Podcast, where we talk about the stuff they didn't teach you in school, how to grow your practice, refine your clinical skills, and get better results for your patients. We're here to help you navigate the real-world challenges of being a healthcare provider, from delivering top-notch patient care to running a business that doesn't run you into the ground. Whether you're fresh out of school or scaling your practice, we're diving into effective, cutting-edge treatments to get patients better faster. We'll also talk about business strategies and tactics to help you work smarter and not harder, and the mindset shifts required to thrive as a top performer in your field. So you can build a career you love without burning out.

If you're ready to learn what works and what doesn't from leading experts, industry innovators, and respected clinicians across a wide range of specialties, you're in the right place, my friend. Let's dive in. Welcome back to The FAKTR Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Riddle. Welcome and thanks for listening. Today's episode is part 2 of our 2-part series, Pulling Back the Curtain on the FAKTR Rehab System. In part 1, our Director of Education, Dr. Todd Riddle, made the case that progressive overload is the missing link in rehab.

Not more tools, not more techniques, but better progression and better load management. Today, we go from framework to mechanism. This episode is titled Pain, Plasticity, and Performance: How Rehab Actually Works, because we're answering the real question: What's changing inside the body when rehab is done well? You're going to hear two main sections: First, Dr. Riddle will break down tissue healing phases and how they map to what we should actually do clinically—calm it down, make it move, make it strong—and talk about why models like peace and love fit the progression conversation. Then we'll shift into fascia, why it matters, how it affects movement and sensation, and why densification is often a better term to use than adhesions. After a quick break, we'll slightly shift course and move into the nervous system and discuss afferentation, pain gating, neurogenic inflammation, cortical maps, and talk about how novel repeatable stimulus drives neuroplastic change. This episode is dense in the best possible way. If you're listening while doing something else, you might want to listen more than once And be sure to bookmark this one to take notes later.

Here's Dr. Riddle.

This is a model of the inflammatory cycle. And as you can see there, we have our hemostasis, which is going to be the very first seconds of an injury, the internal components of the injury. Maybe there's some capillary breakage and we get some bleeding into a specific area that's going to cause swelling and eventually will end up causing pain. Well, after a couple of hours, we enter into the actual inflammatory or the acute phase of an injury. Again, this could be going on for days or weeks. In this phase, our job is to calm it down. Many of you have probably heard that before. When we're in the acute phase, phase, or maybe even in the exacerbation phase of an injury, our job there is to calm it down.

For FAKTR. purposes, this would be the static phase. As they transition through the acute phase and into the proliferative phase, or what we could call the subacute phase, our job here is to make it move. So our focus is going to be on mobility. So if you'll recall back to the FAKTR Rehab continuum, we talked about mobility being a very important component of the overload process. So we go from calming it down and protecting it to making it move. And then as they progress through that subacute phase into the chronic phase of their injury, this is where we see a lot of soft tissue remodeling and the maturation of the collagen that has been laid down.