Therapeutic Exercise, Conditioning, and Rehabilitation Techniques
Core concepts
Know the exercise prescription framework: assess, set functional goals, prescribe load and volume, progress, and reassess. Understand the continuum from range-of-motion and controlled mobility, through strength and proprioception, to power, endurance, and sport-specific retraining. Be familiar with specific techniques-passive and assisted range of motion, stretching, eccentric strengthening, closed versus open kinetic chain exercise, balance and perturbation training, hydrotherapy (swimming versus underwater treadmill), and land treadmill work. Know the principles of progressive overload, specificity, reversibility, and periodization, and how to modify for pain, swelling, or fatigue.
Traps
Questions often reward the principle that exercise must be progressed by measured criteria, not by calendar alone. Watch for items that confuse aquatic buoyancy effects (reduced weight bearing) with resistance effects (water drag rises with speed). Another trap is prescribing strengthening before adequate pain control and joint mobility, or assuming all patients tolerate the same modality.
Worked example / rule of thumb
Postoperative cranial cruciate ligament repair in a dog: weeks 0–2 focus on controlled range of motion, cryotherapy, and assisted weight bearing; then progress closed-chain strengthening and proprioception; add power and sport-specific work only after symmetrical limb use and stable measurements. Rule of thumb: progress one variable at a time and only when the animal meets objective criteria.