A home exercise sheet usually reads like a code: 3 x 12, rest 60 seconds, green band. Each number is a decision. Together they are the dose of your exercise, much as a medicine has a dose, and your physical therapist chose them to match a goal. Knowing what each one does makes your feedback useful.
The four numbers on your sheet
- Repetitions (reps): how many times you perform the movement in a row. Reps and load are tied: a weight you can lift 20 times is light, one you can lift only 6 times is heavy.
- Sets: how many rounds of those reps you do. Sets times reps is your volume.
- Rest: the pause between sets. It decides how recovered you are when the next set starts, and so what the set trains.
- Load: the resistance, whether a band colour, a dumbbell, or your own body weight on one leg. Tempo and weekly frequency count too.
How the numbers map to goals
The American College of Sports Medicine position stand on progression in resistance training (2009) sets out the ranges most therapists still work from. For people new to resistance training it recommends loads that allow 8 to 12 repetitions for strength, with rests of at least 2 to 3 minutes on the main exercises. For hypertrophy, meaning muscle size, it points to the 6 to 12 repetition zone with 1 to 2 minute rests. For local muscular endurance it recommends lighter loads for 10 to 15 repetitions in beginners, rising to 15 to 25 or more with experience, with rests under a minute. For older adults it suggests one to three sets of 8 to 12 repetitions at a moderate load; its earlier guidance gave 10 to 15 for older and more frail people.
These zones are not walls. A 2021 review in the journal Sports by Schoenfeld and colleagues re-examined this repetition continuum and found that muscle growth is similar across a wide range of loads, roughly 30 percent of maximum and above, while heavy loads remain the best choice when the goal is lifting a heavy maximum. It also called the evidence that light loads are uniquely good for endurance equivocal. That flexibility lets your therapist pick a rep range your joint tolerates today and still get the adaptation they want.
Why plans often start light and high
Early in rehab the first job is usually tolerance, not strength: can the tissue handle repeated loading without a flare the next day? Lighter loads and higher repetitions let you practise the movement many times while keeping the stress per rep low as a tendon or surgical repair settles. High reps are not meant to last forever. The 2021 review noted that light sets pushed to the limit feel more uncomfortable than moderate ones, so once the movement is clean and the next-day response is calm, the dose usually shifts to heavier loads and fewer reps.
Why your therapist changes one thing at a time
The ACSM stand gives a simple progression rule for a fixed rep target: when you can perform one or two reps more than prescribed, raise the load by about 2 to 10 percent. Only the load moves. If reps, sets, load and rest all changed in one week, nobody could tell which change produced a sore knee or a good week. Changing one parameter, then watching the next 24 to 48 hours, keeps the experiment readable.
To see those step-ups across a whole programme, read our guide to why rehab exercises get harder
How to report "too easy" or "too hard" usefully
Those phrases do not tell your therapist which number to change. Add detail:
- Count the reps you had left. If a set of 12 felt like you could have done 20, say so; that points to more load. Failing at rep 8 points to a lighter load or fewer reps.
- Say where it changed. Easy for two sets and shaky in the third points to rest or set count, not load.
- Separate effort from pain. Muscles burning in the last few reps is expected. Sharp pain, joint pain, or pain that is worse the next day is a different message and should be reported as pain.
- Note the rest you actually took. A 60 second rest that became four minutes makes the set lighter than planned.
- Mention form. If you could only finish by shrugging, leaning, or speeding up, the dose was too high for the movement quality wanted.
Why the exact numbers matter
Dose is easy to leave vague. A 2022 overview in the British Journal of Sports Medicine covered 28 systematic reviews and 1,467 exercise studies and found that a median of only 24 percent of the items on the standard exercise reporting template were properly described. The authors concluded that if exercise is medicine, how it is prescribed and delivered is unclear. If trials struggle to record dose, memory at a two-week review will too. Write down what you did, rests included.
Doing this in a guided session
In a KineTrue camera-guided session the rep count, sets completed, rest timer and your effort and pain ratings are recorded as you go, so your therapist sees the dose you actually did, not the one on the sheet. That record informs the therapist's decision; it never makes it.
Stop the set and check with your physical therapist if an exercise causes sharp or spreading pain, swelling, numbness, or pain that stays raised into the next day. Do not add load, sets or reps on your own; the progression rule above is your therapist's to apply.