Who hydrotherapy is for
Water takes the argument out of loading. Buoyancy removes most of the body weight going through a joint, warmth reduces guarding, and the water itself provides resistance in every direction — so someone who cannot yet tolerate a single squat on land can work through full range without the joint being punished for it.
It suits the weeks after a knee or hip replacement, arthritic joints that seize up when they are left alone, back pain that flares with upright load, and anyone deconditioned enough that starting on land would mean starting with a setback.
The water is a stage, not a destination
Hydrotherapy is where the program starts, not where it lives. The point is to build enough range, tolerance and confidence in the water that land-based work becomes possible — and then to actually make that transition, in the clinic at Strathfield and on the training floor at Lidcombe, with the same team following the same plan.
Programs that never make that handover leave people swimming forever. Yours has an exit written into it from the first session.