Best thing I learnt growing up? You can't rush a sausage. Honestly, it's probably improved both my cooking and my physio more than half the courses I've been on, because when I started treating patients I realised the exact same rule applies to the body.
Rush a sausage and the outside burns whilst the middle stays undercooked. Rush rehab and the body does exactly the same thing. Looks better briefly, tolerates load too early, then crumbles the second the heat gets turned back up.
Good sausages cook slowly. Low heat, leave them alone, no constant poking, prodding or panicking every 30 seconds. And actually, the body is remarkably similar. Human biology is super clever and most tissue is designed to heal if the environment is right.
Our job as clinicians isn't to force recovery. It's to know what level of load the body can tolerate today, when to ease off and when it's time to turn the heat up. That's the real art of rehab. Not chasing quick wins, not pretending every injury needs some magical technique, just respecting biology enough not to burn the process.
Because superficial recovery is easy. Lasting recovery takes timing.
You can't cheat the clock. Or the sausage.