Physiotherapy Glossary

The electrical 'fire' signal a nerve sends once a stimulus is strong enough.

Technical · Propagated depolarisation once membrane potential rises from ≈ −70 mV to threshold ≈ −55 mV.

Moving a joint through its range using only your own muscles.

Technical · Unassisted voluntary movement through available range.

You move the joint yourself but get help from a dowel, strap or your other arm.

Technical · Mobility in which external assistance supplements active muscle contraction; follows PROM as pain allows.

Nerve routes carrying information from the body up to the brain.

Technical · Sensory pathways transmitting peripheral input to the CNS.

A position, movement or activity that makes your symptoms worse.

Technical · Provocative task used both as a differential screen and a temporary activity-modification target.

Pain from something that normally does not hurt, like a light touch.

Technical · Pain evoked by a normally non-nociceptive stimulus; a feature of sensitisation.

Having no symptoms.

Technical · Absence of clinical symptoms despite possible structural findings.

Having little or no blood supply—so it heals slowly.

Technical · Lacking vascular supply (e.g. much articular cartilage).

Looking at pain through the body, the mind and your social world together.

Technical · Framework integrating biological, psychological and social determinants of pain and disability.

Exercising with a special cuff that limits blood flow so light weights can build strength.

Technical · Partial venous occlusion causing metabolite accumulation, enabling low-load hypertrophy and strength gains.

The order in which movement is lost when a joint capsule tightens.

Technical · Shoulder: external rotation > abduction > flexion (frozen shoulder).

Imagining the worst possible outcome of pain or injury.

Technical · Exaggerated negative orientation toward pain associated with poorer outcomes.

Nerve symptoms retreating from the hand or foot back toward the spine—a good sign.

Technical · Proximal migration of radicular symptoms, typically indicating improvement.

Pain lasting beyond normal healing time, when the alarm system stays switched on.

Technical · Pain > 12 weeks reflecting altered pain processing rather than ongoing tissue damage.

Exercise where the hand or foot is fixed—push-ups, squats.

Technical · Distal segment fixed; promotes co-contraction and joint stability.

A muscle working while it shortens—the lifting part of a curl.

Technical · Muscle contraction with shortening; introduced in phase 3.

A joint that has become stuck because tissues around it shortened.

Technical · Structural shortening of skin, muscle, tendon, ligament or capsule restricting ROM.

Training one arm or leg also helps the other side keep strength.

Technical · Contralateral strength transfer via neural adaptations in brain and spinal cord.

Chemical messengers of the immune system; some increase and some reduce pain.

Technical · Signalling proteins; pro-inflammatory cytokines sensitise nociceptors, anti-inflammatory cytokines reduce activity.

Muscle soreness a day or two after unfamiliar exercise.

Technical · Exercise-induced muscle soreness peaking 24–72 h post-exercise.

The brain's own way of turning pain down.

Technical · Supraspinal modulation of spinal nociceptive transmission via endogenous opioids and other neurochemicals.

Moving stretches like leg swings that rehearse a sport.

Technical · Active, rhythmic length change used in warm-ups; preferred before explosive activity.

A muscle working while it lengthens—lowering a weight.

Technical · Contraction during lengthening; most strains occur here; used in phase 2.

Nerve routes carrying instructions from the brain down to the body.

Technical · Motor/output pathways, e.g. corticospinal tract.

Pain relief that follows exercise—like the 'natural ibuprofen' effect of isometrics.

Technical · Reduced pain sensitivity after exercise, notably isometric loading of tendons.

High-energy sound waves aimed at a painful tendon.

Technical · Acoustic pulses intended to induce microtrauma and healing; mixed evidence.

Avoiding movement because you fear pain, which can keep pain going.

Technical · Model in which pain-related fear and avoidance drive disability and chronicity.

Tough, shock-absorbing cartilage in the meniscus, labrum and discs.

Technical · Dense collagenous cartilage of menisci, labra and intervertebral discs.

Your muscles controlling a joint well during real tasks.

Technical · Dynamic joint stability provided by sensorimotor control under load.

The ball of the upper arm bone is not well controlled in the socket, so the shoulder feels it may slip or come out.

Technical · Symptomatic excessive humeral head translation from static and/or dynamic stabiliser deficiency.

Gradually re-introducing a movement you are sensitive to, in small steps.

Technical · Progressive dosing of feared/sensitive tasks below flare threshold to desensitise.

The smooth coating on the ends of bones in a joint.

Technical · Avascular, aneural articular cartilage reducing friction; degrades in OA.

Feeling more pain than expected from something painful.

Technical · Increased response to a noxious stimulus; associated with inactivity and sensitisation.

Joints that move further than usual.

Technical · Excess ROM, often congenital/collagen-related, reducing passive stability.

Not enough oxygen reaching tissue.

Technical · Oxygen deficiency leading to cell injury.

The first ~3 days after injury when repair begins and the area is sensitive.

Technical · Acute vascular and cellular response ≈ 72 h.

A real, identifiable disruption of tissue.

Technical · Identifiable physical disruption of musculoskeletal tissue.

Scraping the skin with a smooth tool to ease tightness.

Technical · Instrumented superficial soft tissue technique; short-term ROM evidence.

Thinking about the muscle (internal) vs the movement result (external).

Technical · Attentional focus; internal early in rehab, external later.

A muscle working without moving the joint—pushing into a wall.

Technical · Constant-length contraction; 4–5 × 30–45 s for analgesia.

A cartilage rim that deepens the shoulder or hip socket.

Technical · Fibrocartilaginous rim of the glenoid or acetabulum.

How heavy or forceful a load is.

Technical · Peak or rapidly rising force on tissue; relevant to traumatic injuries.

How much and how often you do something.

Technical · Frequency × sets × reps × duration; driver of overuse injuries.

A gentle stretch held for minutes, several times a day.

Technical · End-range hold of 2–10 min, 3–5×/day, to treat contracture.

Days 3 to ~21 when new tissue is laid down.

Technical · Proliferative/fibroblastic phase rebuilding tissue integrity.

Pain from muscles, tendons, ligaments or joints that switches on and off with movement.

Technical · Pain from nociceptor activation in non-neural tissue; localised with clear on/off positions.

C-shaped cushions inside the knee.

Technical · Fibrocartilaginous discs distributing tibiofemoral load; poorly vascularised.

Where muscle turns into tendon—where most strains happen.

Technical · Transition zone between muscle fibres and tendon collagen.

The network of brain areas that weighs all information and decides whether to produce pain.

Technical · Distributed neural network integrating sensory, affective and cognitive inputs to generate pain.

Electric current that makes a weak or 'switched-off' muscle contract.

Technical · Russian or high-voltage currents augmenting voluntary activation post-injury/surgery.

Pain from an irritated nerve—burning, tingling, numbness, travelling.

Technical · Pain arising from lesion or irritation of the somatosensory nervous system.

The nervous system's ability to rewire—for better or worse.

Technical · Experience-dependent change in neural structure and function, including receptor expression.

Your brain's unique pattern for creating a particular pain.

Technical · Characteristic neuromatrix activation pattern underlying a pain experience.

When a negative belief or message makes symptoms worse.

Technical · Adverse outcomes driven by negative expectation, e.g. alarming imaging reports.

The body detecting possible danger—which may or may not lead to pain.

Technical · Neural encoding of noxious stimuli; distinct from pain.

A 'danger detector' nerve ending.

Technical · High-threshold free nerve ending responding to thermal, chemical or mechanical noxious stimuli.

The heaviest weight you can lift once.

Technical · Maximal single-repetition load used to prescribe intensity.

Exercise where the hand or foot moves freely—curls, presses.

Technical · Distal segment free; isolates muscle groups.

The moment something starts to hurt.

Technical · Minimum stimulus intensity perceived as painful; varies little between people.

How much pain you can bear after it starts—this can be trained.

Technical · Maximum pain intensity/duration tolerated; trainable.

A joint moved by something else—a dowel or your other arm—while its muscles relax.

Technical · Externally produced motion with target musculature relaxed.

Nerve symptoms spreading further down the arm or leg—a warning sign.

Technical · Distal spread of radicular symptoms indicating increased irritation.

Pain felt in a limb that has been amputated.

Technical · Pain localised to an absent limb, evidence that pain is centrally generated.

Improvement because you believe a treatment will help.

Technical · Expectation-driven therapeutic effect; evident in sham-surgery trials.

An injection of your own concentrated blood platelets.

Technical · Autologous platelet concentrate injection; limited and inconsistent evidence.

Tighten the stretched muscle briefly, then relax and stretch further.

Technical · Proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation: contract 5–7 s, relax-hold 10–15 s, repeat 2–4×.

Doing a little more over time.

Technical · Systematic increase of ROM, load, volume or velocity to drive adaptation.

Your sense of where your body is in space.

Technical · Afferent sense of joint position and movement from mechanoreceptors.

Nerve pain that travels down a limb from the spine.

Technical · Pain in a dermatomal/nerve-root distribution from root irritation.

A warning sign of something serious that exercise will not fix.

Technical · Clinical feature suggesting serious pathology requiring medical assessment.

Pain felt away from its source—often from an organ.

Technical · Pain perceived remote from a (usually visceral) source; not mechanically reproducible.

Weeks to months when new tissue strengthens and reorganises.

Technical · Collagen maturation/reorganisation phase lasting 4–6 weeks to > 1 year.

How many more reps you could have done at the end of a set.

Technical · Proximity-to-failure metric; book target ≈ 2–3 RIR.

Numbness around the groin and inner buttocks—an emergency warning sign.

Technical · Perianal/perineal sensory loss suggesting cauda equina compromise.

Raising the arm slightly forward of straight out to the side.

Technical · Elevation in the scapular plane (~30° anterior to the frontal plane).

The nervous system turning the 'volume' up so less is needed to trigger pain.

Technical · Lowered activation threshold/increased responsiveness of nociceptive pathways.

How well your nerves and muscles work together to control movement.

Technical · Afferent–efferent loop integrating joint/muscle receptor input with motor output.

A ligament injury.

Technical · Ligament disruption graded I–III.

A muscle (or muscle–tendon) injury.

Technical · Muscle fibre disruption graded I–III, usually at the musculotendinous junction.

A bone crack from repeated loading rather than one big impact.

Technical · Fatigue fracture from cumulative load exceeding bone remodelling capacity.

The modern name for shoulder impingement.

Technical · Sensitivity of supraspinatus, LHB and bursa beneath the acromion.

A painful tendon that has become less tolerant of load (not true inflammation).

Technical · Load-related tendon pain and dysfunction; replaces 'tendinitis'.

A tendon that has thickened after repeated bouts of tendinopathy.

Technical · Structural/degenerative tendon change following recurrent tendinopathy.

A small unit giving electrical tingling to dull pain for a short time.

Technical · Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation; transient analgesia (~15 min after).

The total time a stiff joint spends at its limit each day.

Technical · Cumulative end-range exposure targeted in LLLD stretching.

A tender spot in a muscle; only 'active' ones that hurt need attention.

Technical · Hyperirritable soft-tissue locus (active vs latent); not visible on imaging.

Rating pain from 0 (none) to 10 (worst imaginable).

Technical · 0–10 pain intensity scale; book thresholds ≤ 3 mild, 4–7 moderate, ≥ 8 severe.

Tissues get stronger when they are progressively loaded.

Technical · Principle of load-driven tissue adaptation (bone, and by extension tendon, ligament, disc).