Most of your rehab happens between appointments, which is also when most questions come up. A message to your therapist can save a wasted week of doing an exercise wrong, or of avoiding one you did not need to avoid. It can also be a distraction if it arrives as "it hurts" with nothing else. Here is what is worth sending, what is not, and how to write a message your therapist can act on.
Worth sending
- Pain that has not settled by the next morning. Rehab programmes that allow some pain during exercise, such as the pain-monitoring approach used in Achilles tendinopathy trials, rely on one rule: discomfort during the exercise is acceptable if it eases afterwards and is gone by the next day. Pain that lingers past that point is exactly what your therapist wants to hear about.
- A new symptom. Pins and needles, numbness, a joint that has started clicking or giving way, swelling that was not there last week. New is the key word.
- An exercise you cannot do as prescribed. "I can only hold the wall sit for 15 seconds, not 30" is useful. Silently skipping it is not.
- A setup question. The wrong chair, no space for the camera, no resistance band. Small problems that stop a session from happening.
- Progress. If something that hurt last week does not hurt this week, say so. It changes what happens next.
Not for a message
Chest pain, sudden severe pain, a fall with a suspected fracture, a hot swollen calf, or loss of bladder or bowel control are emergencies. Ring your local emergency number or go to urgent care. A message to your physio may not be read for hours, and these cannot wait.
How to write a message that gets a useful answer
- Name the exercise. "The clamshells" beats "the one on my side".
- Say when. During the exercise, straight after, or the next morning.
- Give a number. "4 out of 10 during, back to 1 within an hour" tells your therapist more than any adjective.
- Say what you did about it. Stopped, reduced reps, carried on.
- Ask one clear question. "Should I keep doing it at fewer reps, or pause it until Thursday?"
What the research says about staying in contact
A 2022 systematic review in Archives of Physiotherapy pooled ten randomised trials with 1,117 participants where a digital element (messages, calls, apps, or web check-ins) was added to a home exercise programme. Seven of the ten found higher adherence in the group with the digital contact, and every trial with a follow-up under six weeks did. The longer-term picture was less clear. Staying in touch seems to help most in the early weeks, when the programme is new and the questions are many.
How KineTrue fits
KineTrue has a chat between you and your therapist inside the app, next to your session record, so when you write "the bridges hurt today" they can open that session and see the reps, the pain score you logged, and the movement quality alongside your message. You get a notification when they reply. For the background on why pain reports matter so much, read why your therapist asks about pain before and after exercise.
In-app messages are for non-urgent questions and may not be answered the same day. For anything that feels urgent, phone the clinic or emergency services rather than waiting for a reply.