Three Types of Physical Therapy Exercises for Relief, Recovery and Reaching Your Full Potential

Still doing the same PT exercises you were given eons ago? There’s a better way to think about physical therapy home exercises for your big goals.

Confused about your home exercise frequency? Still doing the same physical therapy exercises you were issued eons ago? The truth is that even exercises from a few months ago might not be helping you now. Here’s a powerful way to think about how the movement prescriptions given to you by your physio help you to both recover and aim for better than before.

At minimum there are three categories or “buckets” of Physical Therapy / Physio exercises for most orthopedic (musculoskeletal) outpatient conditions.

Most of us need all three of the following types of exercises, or approaches to exercise in order to recover from pain or injury and get back to feeling good and capable in our bodies.

It is the combination (dare I say “synergy”) of all three buckets that helps people to get out of pain and back into doing the things they love.

Some exercises or movements given to you by a physio might fit into more than one category, but this overall framework is still useful to consider:

1) Pain Reduction or Symptom Relief

Exercises intended to help relieve pain or symptoms can be done frequently in the beginning or early stages of rehab / physical therapy. They might be given to you to perform daily or 2-3 times a day and should help you feel better fairly soon, ideally as soon as you have finished them.

Hopefully your pain or other symptoms that brought you to physical therapy lessen over time (within weeks or a month). Therefore exercises intended for pain relief will be needed less and less as time goes on.

Although these exercises are not typically intended to be done every day for life, it's still a good idea to keep a running list of pain relief movement suggestions from your physical therapist in one area (like in an app or a phone note or spreadsheet) so that you can return to them if your symptoms return.

What Pain Relief Exercises Look Like

Exercises in this category are often gentle, help you to feel better within minutes, and may include things like self massage / foam rolling. This doesn’t mean that other categories of physical therapy exercise don’t also make you feel better. They also should contribute to you feeling good, but the result may not be as quick.

Typical frequency:

Daily or (eventually) as needed

2) Targeted Habit changing or "Corrective" exercises

These exercises are aimed at balancing out old patterns or lifelong tendencies in your body.

For example, if you tend to stand with most of your weight on your right leg, an exercise to shift your weight to your left leg in front of a mirror using your dominant eye might be corrective.

Or if you tend to stand with your lower ribs shifted forward, pressing them back into a wall or yoga mat while lying on your back might help to teach you which muscles to use when the wall or mat is not there.

What Corrective Exercises are Good For

This category of exercise typically makes for excellent warm-ups before general exercise. They can also be done as needed or over a period of a few months until the habit or tendency is broken, or "forever" so long as they feel useful for undoing unhelpful tendencies. (Think: chronically tight areas)

When addressing something like scoliosis, a life-long set of exercises that counter your unusual spinal curves could be beneficial.

Typical frequency:

Daily or pre-workouts (as part of your warm up routine)

3) Strength Training

Strength training exercises are the third main type of exercise a physical therapist gives. Strength based exercises are for long term healing of tendon issues, to address muscle imbalances that lead to problems, or can help meet your bigger goals for more complex movement (cross training).

What Strength Training Exercises for Rehabilitation Might Look Like

Typically the strength training exercises encouraged by a physical therapist will start with movements that isolate (relatively) targeted muscles. The exercise should make that muscle or muscle group very tired and should feel physically challenging.

For example: a physical therapy patient might start with theraband exercises to strengthen their rotator cuff. At first, they notice while doing the exercises that the injured side is much weaker than the non injured side.

Over a series of weeks, they notice right and left are more similar and that their rotator cuff muscles get tired much less quickly.

At that point, that patient can start doing more challenging shoulder exercises, maybe starting with simple one-joint-is-moving type of movements (example: bicep curl), and later moving on to complex, multi-joint movements (example: Arnold press).

Are you just maintaining rather than strengthening?

Strengthening exercises are not simply exercises that contract your muscles. Strength is something that builds or progresses over time, otherwise it is not really strengthening, just maintaining.

Dream big

Maintaining (plateauing) is appropriate in certain situations, but it likely is not your long term goal. Physical therapists really can and want to help you to dream big, so let them know if you want to run a marathon, or hike the Grand Canyon.

The topic of exercises intended to build strength deserves a little more attention than the previous categories of physical therapy exercises, so read more about how to approach physical therapy exercises meant for strength [in this upcoming blog post that we will link here].

Typical Frequency:

2-3 times a week if you really challenge a muscle and aim for local muscle fatigue.

NEXT STEPS:

Want to learn more about how movement and exercise can be used to

recover from injury,
prevent injury,
help you reach your full capacity
and get back to doing what you love?

Sign up to watch our free webinar replay, Physio Wisdom to Return to Exercise or Yoga after Injury. (We promise this topic is 100x more interesting than it sounds and can set you up for a lifetime of skillful movement choices!)

Need physical therapy now?

We offer easy online booking, clear pricing and even a free 15 minute “Are We a Good Fit?” call. Here’s the link to explore our offerings: https://wellilo.janeapp.com

This blog post was originally published on December 19, 2025.

Categories: : Physical Therapy