If you have just undergone surgery, rehab will be essential for facilitating a safe return back to your activity or sport. It’s likely that your surgeon told you to come to physiotherapy and in some ways it is just as important as the surgery itself in terms of getting you back to your pre-injury level and preventing a recurrence of the injury! Rehab can be broken down into various stages: 

Stage 1. Normalize joint range of motion 

Stage 2. Maximize strength + achieve strength symmetry between the limbs 

Stage 3. Maximize power + achieve power symmetry between the limbs 

Stage 4. Sports specific movement (planned drills > unplanned drills) 

The first stage of rehab will generally emphasize joint range of motion as joints tend to stiffen up after surgery due to all the collateral damage to neighboring structures that occurs during surgery. Finding ways to make rehab your top priority post surgery is essential because what you can achieve early on in terms of your range of motion, is a good indicator of outcomes down the track. For example, in the case of a knee surgery, you have a window to achieve full knee extension and if you don’t, it will negatively impact all aspects of rehab later down the track. After you have achieved your range of motion goals we will begin emphasizing the next stages of rehab. During Rehab we will likely emphasize a certain stage but these stages are not mutually exclusive and can be worked on simultaneously based on