By William Huang, Registered Physiotherapist
Your first active rehab session is a 45-minute assessment with our kinesiologist. It starts with an assessment of the injury and how you move, and ends with a customized exercise plan. Wear clothes you can move in, bring closed shoes, and book it online at either of our clinics.
What Active Rehab Is, and Who Books It
Active rehab is a kinesiologist-led exercise program, and the program starts with its own injury assessment. David Wong, our kinesiologist, runs it at both of our clinic locations, and the initial assessment is bookable online.
Active rehab suits two situations. The first is someone partway through recovery from an injury, moving again but still weak, or unsure how much to load the area before something complains. The second is someone who has never done structured exercise, or is years away from training, and wants a supervised starting point.
One thing to be clear about before you book: kinesiology has no statutory college in BC. The BC Association of Kinesiologists is a voluntary membership body, not a regulator, so a kinesiologist does not hold the college registration that physiotherapists, chiropractors and massage therapists do. That takes nothing away from the exercise work, which is where the value of this service sits. In practice that means the work is exercise programming and coaching, and anything that needs a diagnosis belongs with a college-registered clinician.
The First 45 Minutes
The initial assessment is 45 minutes. In my experience a movement-based assessment starts with questions about the injury and what you are trying to get back to. What happened, what makes the area worse, what has changed since, and where you want to end up, whether that is a hiking trip in the spring, a rec hockey season, or carrying groceries up two flights without thinking about it.
A movement assessment generally looks at loaded patterns rather than single muscles, and at how the pattern changes when the area is loaded. What a kinesiologist watches for is compensation, and those patterns are difficult to describe from memory and straightforward to see in the room.
The session ends with the start of a program. The clinic describes it as a customized program focused on the specific deficiencies the assessment finds. A short list works better than a long one, for the reason below.
If you have had the area treated before, bring what you were told; earlier findings give the program a reference point. An older report is a starting point rather than a current picture.
What to Wear and What to Bring
Athletic clothes you can move in, and closed shoes. That covers almost everyone.
- Shorts or leggings rather than jeans. Denim restricts the squat you are being asked to show.
- A top that lets your shoulder blade be seen moving, if the shoulder or upper back is the area involved.
- Closed, supportive shoes. Sandals and slip-ons make step-ups and squats harder to load safely.
- Any physiotherapy notes you already have, or a home exercise sheet from a previous program.
- Water, particularly for a session that lands at the end of a work day.
- If you are using an ICBC claim, your Personal Health Number and your ICBC claim number.
No notes and no paperwork is not a reason to delay booking. Without them, an assessment usually spends a little longer on how the injury began and what has changed since.
Where a Physiotherapy Assessment Fits
If the injury is new and nobody has looked at it yet, a general advice is a physiotherapy assessment first. That is advice, not a rule you have to clear before booking active rehab. You can book the kinesiology assessment directly.
A kinesiologist is not the person who works out whether a clicking hip is an irritated tendon or a joint problem, and a strength program built on the wrong assumption can cost you weeks. Instead, a physiotherapist assess the joint or muscle directly, screen for anything that needs imaging or a physician, and refer out when the finding sits outside my scope. Hands-on tests cannot rule out a tear or a fracture on their own, so when the picture stays unclear, a referral is the honest answer rather than a confident guess.
That cuts both ways. Staying in physiotherapy long after the pain has settled is the mistake, because what is actually needed is a volume of structured strength work that a shorter treatment appointment is not built to deliver.
If you have already been assessed, a discharge summary, an exercise sheet, or even the name of what was diagnosed saves a chunk of the first session.
How the Program Builds From There
After the first session, active rehab is almost entirely exercise, and it progresses as you tolerate more load. Early programs are usually bodyweight and light resistance bands, with heavier load added as the movement holds up.
The between-session list stays short on purpose. Research on home exercise adherence suggests people stick with a program of three or fewer exercises more reliably than with a longer one. A 2018 systematic review by Bachmann and colleagues reported that adherence dropped once more than four exercises were prescribed. A short list you actually do is worth more than a long one you skip after week one.
Session spacing varies with the person and the goal rather than following one standard schedule, and a program usually gets checked against how you were moving at the start. If strength work alone is not closing the gap, that is the point to come back to physiotherapy rather than to push harder into the same program. Moving back to physiotherapy at that point is a reasonable step, not a sign the program failed.
What to ask before you leave session one
A first session lands better when you leave understanding the plan, not just holding a list of exercise names. Five questions worth asking:
- What am I actually working on here, in plain terms?
- How do I tell a good repetition from a compensated one when nobody is watching?
- What counts as normal soreness after these, and what does not?
- When should I check back in if something feels off between sessions?
- Roughly how long before we look at this again?
Using an ICBC Claim for Active Rehab
Active rehab is billed as kinesiology under an ICBC claim, and kinesiology carries its own pre-approved allowance. Under ICBC's Enhanced Care, each provider type has its own separate pre-approved visit allowance in the first 12 weeks after a crash: 25 physiotherapy visits, 25 chiropractic visits, 12 registered massage therapy visits, 12 kinesiology visits, 12 acupuncture visits, 12 counselling visits, and 12 psychology visits. Using visits with one provider type does not reduce or share the allowance for another. Treatment beyond the pre-approved visits or window is not automatic. Your provider submits a Treatment Plan to ICBC, ideally 1-2 weeks before the approved visits or end date run out, and ICBC decides whether to approve further treatment. Those figures are current as of September 2026.
You don't need a referral from a family physician or nurse practitioner, or approval from ICBC, to start pre-approved treatment after a crash, and coverage doesn't depend on who was responsible for the crash. You will need your Personal Health Number (PHN) and your ICBC claim number to book. Our ICBC claims page covers the paperwork side, and what to expect in the first 12 weeks walks through the same claim from the physiotherapy side.
What You Can Do at Home Before Your First Session
A little preparation makes the first session more useful, and none of it involves training hard the day before.
Stop the exercise if you feel sharp or worsening pain; mild, brief discomfort is acceptable only where the specific source you're following says so; if pain is severe, sudden, or follows an injury, get assessed before continuing. That rule applies to whatever you are already doing on your own, and mild soreness that settles by the next morning is a different thing from pain that builds day over day.
- Write down when the injury started, what makes it better, and what makes it worse. Vague recall on the day costs time in the room.
- Note any exercises you were given before, including the ones you stopped doing and why you stopped.
- Keep moving in the ways that do not aggravate the area. Moving a little earlier in the day is usually more comfortable than arriving straight off a desk chair.
- Bring the goal, not just the symptom. A return to hiking and a return to rec hockey produce different programs.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a referral to book active rehab?
No. The initial active rehab assessment is bookable online at either clinic. If the injury is new and nobody has assessed it yet, a physiotherapy assessment first gives the program a clearer starting point, but that is a recommendation rather than a requirement.
Will the kinesiologist tell me what is wrong?
Not in diagnostic terms. The assessment looks at how you move and where strength or control is missing, and the program is built around what it finds. If something looks more like an unresolved injury than a strength gap, the right next step is a physiotherapy assessment before the loading continues.
Is active rehab painful?
It should not reproduce the sharp pain of the original injury. Muscle fatigue by the end of a session is normal and expected. If an exercise causes sharp pain, stop that exercise and raise it with your kinesiologist rather than quietly working around it.
What if I have never done structured exercise before?
That is common, and it changes nothing about how the first session runs. The assessment starts from what you can do now, and early programs are usually bodyweight movement. There is no fitness standard to clear before booking.
Can I switch between the two clinics?
Yes. Active rehab runs at both our Kingsway and Joyce locations, so you can book whichever one fits your week. Because the same kinesiologist works at both clinics, the comparison against your first assessment carries over whichever location you book.
How is active rehab different from physiotherapy?
Physiotherapy combines assessment, hands-on treatment and targeted exercise from a college-registered clinician, aimed first at working out what is going on. Active rehab is almost entirely progressive exercise, coached by a kinesiologist, aimed at rebuilding capacity.
Booking Your First Session
Booking takes a couple of minutes. Choose the active rehab initial assessment, pick Kingsway or Joyce, and give yourself a few extra minutes on the day so the 45 minutes starts without a rush. If you are not sure whether to start with active rehab or a physiotherapy assessment, a physiotherapy assessment is the safer starting point for anything new or unexplained.
Book your first session online, or read how our active rehab programs are built before you go. If you are working back from a sports injury, physiotherapy for rehabilitating sports injuries covers the treatment side of the same recovery.
This is general information, not a diagnosis: see a clinician for advice specific to you.
