What Is Active Rehabilitation

What is Active Rehabilitation? Also called Therapeutic Exercise, it is functionally based, injury and sport specific rehabilitation. Active Rehabilitation used to be directed mainly toward athletes, but is now used for anyone in the general population that is in need of rehabilitation. Active Rehabilitation exercise\’s are geared toward re-establishing the necessary level of function for an individual\’s performance.

When an injury occurs your doctor will determine how much rest, if any, is required. Many doctors now suggest Hydrotherapy with no rest at all. Hydrotherapy is exercise performed in a therapeutic pool. The buoyancy of water allows for strength and flexibility training without any weight bearing on the injury. This effectively enables the individual to begin rehabilitation earlier. This is especially important when it is considered that prolonged rest can actually result in a loss of functional capacity. In fact, total inactivity can result in up to 5% muscle strength loss a day!

Therefore, it is important to begin restoring normal range of motion as soon as possible. Active rehabilitation accomplishes this through flexibility training and stretching exercises that are specific to the injury. Once normal range of motion has been established and maintained, strength training is then introduced in order to restore strength at the injured site.

Active Rehabilitation focuses on functional restoration of the injury, enabling you to get back to your maximal performance as soon as possible!

Karp Rehabilitation is an active rehabilitation program specializing with soft-tissue injury rehabilitation. For more information call 604.420.7800.