Wall Squats

I find wall squats very difficult. Painful, even... in both knees. It's one of the exercises prescribed by my PT. Maybe I'm not doing them right?

I biked for an hour yesterday, did the wall squats, the hamstring-on-the-ball, and the step down exercises per my PT.

I'm pretty sore today, on the medial side. Maybe I hit it too hard?

Still no appointment yet with ortho.

After my last ACL surgery, my PT basically told me that exercises are going to hurt and should hurt. HOWEVER, he said there's two types of pain to watch out for: 1) really sharp pain and 2) pain that lasts into the next day. He said if this happens, to stop doing the exercise at home until I see him again. The pain could be from bad form, or it could be simply that your knee isn't ready. Or it could be that the hour of biking on top of everything else was simply too much. It's kind of one of those things you have to play with.

At any rate, I'm no physical therapist. But, my PT guy told me not to do wall squats because he found that they often force you into bad form. He is also a firm believer in focusing on core strength while doing all exercises, which wall-squats lack. (He believes I tore my ACL due to weakness in my core, and I actually really believe him when I think about how it happened. ) He had me start with regular squats, just not going as deep because of the pain. It hurt on the inside of my kneecap for a few weeks (not too sharp, and went away as soon as I stopped doing the exercise), but eventually went away. I also found out why squats had ALWAYS hurt my knees in the past- I had bad form. Now I know the right form and it feels great to do squats!

Thanks... next time I see the PT I'll ask her to show me again and make sure I'm doing them correctly.

Try putting an exercise ball behind the small of your back and push against it/use it for support as you do the squats.

Make sure your knee never extends past where it's in line with your ankle. You should always see your toes.