How to Send Exercise Videos to Your Physical Therapist

When my physio first asked me to send exercise videos between appointments, I thought it'd take five minutes. It didn't. Between propping my phone on a water bottle, re-recording bad angles, trimming dead time from each clip, and uploading everything to Google Drive, the video prep took longer than the actual exercises.

I did this twice a week for months. Here's what I learned about making it less painful.

Why your PT wants video in the first place

Without video, your physio is working from your description of how the exercise felt. That's not much to go on. Video lets them see compensations you can't feel, like your knee caving inward on a squat or your back rounding during a hip hinge. They can adjust your program between sessions instead of waiting until your next appointment to discover you've been doing something wrong for two weeks.

The typical process (and why it takes forever)

Here's what most people do: prop phone against something, hit record, walk into frame, do the exercise, walk back, stop recording. Repeat ten times. Each clip has 10-15 seconds of dead time at the start and end where you're just walking back and forth.

Then you need to trim all of that out. On your phone. With a tiny timeline you're pinching and dragging. For every single clip. I timed it once: 15 minutes of exercises, 22 minutes of video editing. That ratio is backwards.

What your PT actually needs to see

I asked my physio what he actually wanted, and the answer was simpler than I expected:

• A clear view of the relevant joint and the movement around it
• 2-3 reps, not the full set
• Clean clips without the walk-to-phone footage
• The same angle each time so he could compare week over week

That last one matters more than you'd think. If you film your squat from the side one week and the front the next, it's hard to see progress.

Which angles to use

Side view works for most exercises. Squats, lunges, hip hinges, anything where depth matters. Front or back view is better when symmetry is the question, like checking if one hip drops during a single-leg exercise. Ask your PT which angle they want for each exercise. Mine had preferences I wouldn't have guessed.

Trimming without losing your mind

The phone's built-in editor works, but it's slow. You're doing the same fiddly trim operation for every clip. I eventually built Live Video Feedback partly because of this. One key press to trim, instead of dragging a tiny timeline around. What used to take 20 minutes now takes about 2.

If you don't want a dedicated tool, at least batch your trimming. Record everything first, then sit down and trim all clips in one go. It's faster than alternating between exercising and editing.

How to actually send the clips

Email works if you have one or two clips. For a full session (8-12 exercises), you'll hit file size limits fast. Google Drive or Dropbox is the most reliable option. Create a shared folder with your PT and drop clips in after each session.

Some physios use patient portals. If yours does, upload there. WhatsApp and iMessage technically work but they compress the video, which makes it harder to see small form details. Fine for a quick "does this look right?" but not great for detailed review.

Making it stick

The honest truth: if the process is annoying, you'll stop doing it. I nearly did. The weeks I skipped sending videos, my progress stalled because my physio couldn't catch form issues early. Set up a filming spot you can leave in place, use the same angles each time, and find a trimming method that doesn't eat into your rehab time. The videos don't need to be perfect. They just need to exist.