Treatment you do, not treatment done to you

Active rehabilitation is the part of recovery where you are the one working. Instead of lying on a table while someone treats you, you are loading the injured tissue on purpose, under supervision, in a way that is measured and gradually made harder.

It is the difference between a knee that stops hurting and a knee you trust on a hill, a ladder or a field.

Passive treatment still has a place, especially early on when something is too irritable to load. It is just not what gets you back to the thing you were doing before.

What a session actually looks like

Not a circuit class, and not a list of exercises emailed to you after a ten minute chat.

Every session is one on one with a registered physiotherapist, on a full gym floor, for the whole session. You warm up, you work through loaded movement that targets the specific thing that is limiting you, and your physiotherapist adjusts the load as they watch you do it. Strength work, balance and control work, and movements that look like the activity you are trying to get back to.

At Forza that happens inside Evolve Strength in downtown Vancouver, which means the equipment for real loading is there rather than a few bands in a treatment room.

What you do between sessions

The work does not stop when you leave. You go home with homework, and your physiotherapist helps you refine your own training plan so you know exactly what to work on between sessions. That is where a lot of the progress is made, and it is why people who do it tend to move through their rehab faster.

How we decide when to progress you

This is where programmes usually go wrong. Progression gets decided on how long it has been, or on how you say you feel, and both of those are poor guides.

We test instead. Force plate testing and handheld dynamometry give us numbers for how much force you can produce, how evenly you are loading each side, and how that is changing week to week. When the numbers say the leg is ready for more, you get more. When they say it is not, you do not, and you can see why.

It also means the end of the programme is a decision based on evidence rather than a feeling.

Book your assessment with a registered physiotherapist, or call the clinic on 604-359-2919. No doctor's referral needed.

Who pays for it

ICBC and WorkSafeBC. Forza does not bill ICBC or WorkSafeBC directly at this time. If your injury came from a crash or from work you can still book as a private patient.

Extended health. Most workplace plans cover physiotherapy, and we direct bill the major ones so you are not paying up front and chasing a reimbursement. Your plan decides the limits, so it is worth a call to the number on your benefits card.

Privately. Plenty of people pay for a block of sessions themselves, especially after surgery when they want to know they are doing the right work rather than guessing.

Is it for you?

Active rehabilitation suits you if you have got past the acute stage and you are trying to get back to something specific: work that is physical, a sport, or simply being able to lift your kids without thinking about it. It also suits you if you have done a course of treatment somewhere else, felt better, and then found the problem returned when you went back to normal life. That pattern usually means the tissue was never loaded enough to cope with what you were asking of it.

If you are not sure whether you are at that stage yet, that is a reasonable thing to ask us. Call 604-359-2919 or email contact@forzaphysiotherapy.com, or read more about active rehabilitation at Forza.