10/29/2025
Your Achilles doesn’t care how much it hurts it cares how much you load it!
A study looked at 12 common rehab exercises for runners with Achilles pain and measured how much force each one puts through the tendon.
The results?
* Simple things like heel raises and walking put 1–3x your bodyweight through the tendon.
* Running, hopping, and jumping put 5–6x your bodyweight through it.
* And here’s the kicker: pain and load weren’t related.
(More load didn’t always mean more pain!)
What this means:
To get your Achilles ready for running again, you’ve got to progress beyond slow, heavy heel raises and add faster, springier work like hops and skips.
A little pain is okay, progress is what matters.
At Onward Physical Therapy, we use research like this to get runners out of pain and back to performance.
(Research from Sancho et al., Physical Therapy in Sport, 2023)
