Can Physical Therapy Help With Pain That Won't Go Away
You’ve tried rest. You’ve tried stretching. Maybe you’ve tried a foam roller, a new pillow, a different pair of shoes, or a few sessions of massage. The pain got a little better, then came back. Now you’re stuck in a cycle: weeks or months of something that just won’t fully go away.
If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone. And physical therapy may be exactly what’s missing from your recovery.
Why Does Some Pain Stick Around?
When pain lasts longer than a few weeks, or keeps coming back even after you “rest it,” something deeper is usually going on. Your body is smart. When one area hurts or isn’t working properly, surrounding muscles, joints, and movement patterns shift to compensate. Over time, those compensations become the new normal.
Here’s the problem: the original issue might have partially healed, but the compensations it created are now causing their own set of problems. That nagging hip tightness might be driving your low back pain. The shoulder that “almost” got better might keep flaring up because the muscles around your shoulder blade never reactivated properly.
This is why rest alone doesn’t work for chronic or recurring pain. Rest can calm down symptoms. It doesn’t address the movement dysfunction that’s keeping the cycle going.
What Counts as Chronic Pain?
In clinical terms, chronic pain is pain that persists beyond the expected healing timeline, generally longer than 12 weeks. But for most active adults in Culver City, it’s simpler than that. It’s the thing that’s been bothering you for months. The low back stiffness that shows up every morning. The knee that aches after every run. The neck tension that “you’ve had forever” and never fully leaves.
Research shows that chronic musculoskeletal pain affects a significant portion of the adult population, and that it often responds poorly to passive treatments like medication, rest, or isolated modalities. The most effective long-term approach, according to a large body of evidence, is active, movement-based treatment, which is exactly what physical therapy provides.
How Physical Therapy Treats Pain That Won’t Go Away
At Victory Performance and Physical Therapy, we take a different approach to chronic pain than what many people have experienced before. We don’t just treat where it hurts. We evaluate how your entire body moves to find out why it hurts.
A comprehensive movement assessment. Your first visit includes a full evaluation of how you move, not just the painful area, but the joints and muscles above and below it. Pain in the knee often starts at the hip. Shoulder problems frequently connect to thoracic spine stiffness. Low back pain can trace back to weak glutes or a tight psoas (the deep hip flexor muscle that connects your lower spine to your legs). We look at the full picture.
Hands-on manual therapy. Joint mobilization, myofascial release, and soft tissue work help reduce pain, improve range of motion, and restore normal joint mechanics. This is the hands-on component that helps you feel better in the short term while we address the bigger issues.
Targeted strengthening. This is where the long-term change happens. Chronic pain almost always involves muscles that have become weak, inhibited, or poorly coordinated. We build a progressive strengthening program that reactivates those muscles and gives your body the stability and support it needs. You receive a personalized exercise plan through our Victory App so you can follow along with video-guided exercises between sessions.
Movement retraining. If you’ve been moving differently to avoid pain, even without realizing it, those patterns need to be corrected. Otherwise, the compensations keep creating new problems. We retrain how you squat, hinge, reach, and perform the specific activities that matter to you.
A 2021 clinical practice guideline from the Academy of Orthopaedic Physical Therapy recommends exercise-based treatment as a first-line intervention for chronic musculoskeletal pain, with manual therapy as an effective complement for improving function and reducing disability. (George et al., 2021, JOSPT)
Adrienne A. came to Victory after years of lower back pain that other providers hadn’t been able to resolve:
“I had gone to chiropractors and other physical therapists in the past, but didn’t have any success. After some time, I decided to give PT another try and found this gem that is Victory. Julia was amazing in helping me understand the root of the pain and created a plan to correct it. In less than two months, the pain was gone altogether.”
Tired of dealing with pain that keeps coming back? Our team at Victory Performance and Physical Therapy in Culver City specializes in finding the root cause, not just treating symptoms.
Call today: 424-543-4336
Why Didn’t Rest, Stretching, or Massage Fix It?
These are all reasonable things to try. And for simple, acute issues, they often help. But for chronic or recurring pain, each one has a limitation.
Rest reduces inflammation and gives tissues time to heal. But if the underlying cause of your pain is a movement dysfunction, meaning weak stabilizing muscles, poor joint mechanics, or muscle imbalances, rest won’t change any of those things. You’ll feel better for a while, then the pain returns when you go back to your normal activities.
Stretching can temporarily improve flexibility, but if tightness is your body’s response to instability, stretching can actually make things worse. A tight hamstring, for example, might be compensating for a weak core. Stretching the hamstring without strengthening the core just removes the compensation without fixing the problem.
Massage feels great and can reduce muscle tension in the short term. But muscle tension is often a symptom, not a cause. If your upper traps are tight because your scapular stabilizers aren’t doing their job, the tension will come right back after every session.
Physical therapy is different because it addresses the root cause. It combines the hands-on work that helps you feel better now with the targeted exercise that changes the pattern for good.
Is It Too Late to Start Physical Therapy for Chronic Pain?
No. And this is an important point. Many people assume that because they’ve had pain for months or years, it’s “too far gone” for physical therapy to help. That’s not what the research shows.
A Cochrane systematic review found that exercise-based physical therapy produces significant improvements in both pain and function for chronic low back pain, even in patients who had been dealing with symptoms for extended periods. The review found that exercise therapy was more effective than usual care and education alone for reducing pain. (Hayden et al., 2021, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews)
The difference is that chronic conditions require a more structured, progressive approach than acute injuries. At Victory, we build a plan that starts where your body is right now and progressively challenges it over time. The goal isn’t just pain relief. It’s building the strength and movement quality that keeps the pain from coming back.
Maria P. had been dealing with sciatic pain for years before coming to Victory:
“After a few weeks of physical therapy at this wonderful place, my sciatic problems have been alleviated. I am able to work and enjoy my daily routine without feeling pain.”
What Makes Victory’s Approach Different for Chronic Pain?
If you’ve been to physical therapy before and it didn’t work, there are a few things about our approach that set us apart.
We don’t use cookie-cutter protocols. Every treatment plan at Victory is built around your specific evaluation findings, your goals, and the activities you want to get back to. If you’re a runner training along Ballona Creek, your plan will look different from someone who lifts weights at their local Culver City CrossFit affiliate.
We treat the whole chain, not just the painful spot. Pain in one area almost always connects to dysfunction somewhere else. Our Doctors of Physical Therapy are trained to evaluate the entire kinetic chain, from your feet to your core to your shoulders, to find where the real breakdown is happening.
We incorporate progressive strengthening, not just stretching and modalities. Research consistently shows that strength is the foundation of lasting pain relief. We build strength into every treatment plan because that’s what creates permanent change.
We educate you on why your body is doing what it’s doing. Understanding the “why” behind your pain changes how you approach recovery. When you understand that your back pain is driven by weak hip stabilizers and not a damaged spine, it shifts your mindset from fear to empowerment.
A growing body of research supports the role of pain neuroscience education combined with exercise therapy for improving outcomes in chronic pain patients. When patients understand that chronic pain often reflects changes in how the nervous system processes signals, rather than ongoing tissue damage, they engage more actively in their recovery and report better outcomes. (Núñez-Cortés et al., 2024, PAIN)
What Does Recovery From Chronic Pain Look Like?
Recovery from chronic pain doesn’t follow a straight line. You won’t wake up one day with the pain completely gone. Instead, progress usually looks like this:
Pain becomes less frequent, from daily to a few times per week
Pain intensity drops, from a 7/10 to a 3/10
You can do more before the pain shows up: running an extra mile, sitting through a full workday, sleeping through the night
You feel stronger and more confident in your body
Flare-ups still happen occasionally, but they’re shorter and less intense, and you know how to manage them
The goal at Victory isn’t to make you dependent on physical therapy forever. It’s to give you the tools and the strength to manage your body independently. We want you to leave treatment stronger than you were before the pain started.
Take the First Step Toward Lasting Relief
If you’ve been dealing with pain that won’t go away, whether it’s been weeks, months, or years, we can help. At Victory Performance and Physical Therapy in Culver City, we specialize in helping active adults break the cycle of chronic pain and get back to doing what they love.
