Heel slide exercise · Knee pain · St. Louis · Regen.MD physiotherapy
Heel slide exercise:
win back your knee bend
The heel slide is a home exercise that brings back the bend in your knee. Face up with both legs long, glide one heel along the floor toward your seat until the bend feels full but easy, then glide it home. Slow tempo, ten slides.
Only the exercises your physician has ticked on your home plan are yours to do. Twice daily is the rhythm unless the written plan says something different.
Step by step: heel slide exercise
- Starting position. Face up, both legs long.
- The motion. Glide one heel along the floor toward your seat, letting the knee fold until it feels full but easy. Glide it home again.
- How much. Slow tempo, ten slides.
What the heel slide does for tissue repair
Cartilage is fed by the joint fluid that motion pumps across it. Bending the knee through a comfortable range feeds the joint and keeps scar tissue from shortening your motion, so stairs, chairs and car seats stay possible.
Fresh from an injection? Read this first
After a PRP or other orthobiologic injection in your knee, the treated tissue needs a protected stretch of days before it is asked to work. Your physician tells you when this exercise comes back. When it does, start with fewer repetitions and build to the full dose over the following visits. Loading in steps like this is how the repair signal from the injection turns into stronger tissue.
More on that: why load is the treatment an injection cannot supply.
Form errors we correct most often
- Cranking past a gentle stretch.
- The heel lifting off the floor.
- Rushing back to straight.
Signs that mean stop and phone us
Feeling the muscle work, a gentle pull, or some next-day stiffness is normal. Call us at (314) 295-3000 if you notice:
- Pain that turns sharp or stabbing
- A pain score that climbs 2 or more points and stays up longer than an hour
- New numbness, tingling or loss of strength
- Feeling dizzy, or your eyesight changing
Call 911, not the clinic, for chest pain, a hard time breathing or passing out.
Tracking what changes
Keep a short log: a check mark for each session and one pain score per day. Hand it over at each appointment; your technician tallies the sessions and has you perform one repetition so your form can be corrected. At each re-check you also repeat the same function questionnaire, and if your physician orders it, a Kinetisense 3D motion scan, so the change is measured instead of guessed.
What to remember
- Heel keeps contact.
- Full but easy, never forced.
- Slow out, slow back.
Show us you have it: Before you go, slide twice for us so today’s bend can be measured. If a point is fuzzy, say so and we walk through it again with you.
The rest of the knee series
- Thigh squeeze (quad set): thigh switch-on
- Straight leg raise: thigh strength, knee straight
- Sit to stand: chair rise
Related reading: PRP knee injection in St. Louis, why knee pain comes back after therapy.
Where this fits: the Regen.MD physiotherapy program, physician-directed rehab paired with our regenerative care. A physician must be in the building and reachable within moments before any treatment begins.