Knee pain.  It sucks and no one should have to deal with it.  When it comes to knee pain I’m a firm believer in exhausting all of your options before submitting to the dreaded knife.

Surgery is expensive.

Rehab is long, painful, and extremely unrewarding in its early stages.

That being said, I’m no doctor.  You should listen to yours and always consult her/him before engaging in any type of exercise program.

Knee pain, for the most part, is a symptom that tells us that there is some sort of dysfunction above or below the joint and not necessarily within.  Today I’ll explain to you a few “lo-tech” steps you can take to start appropriately dealing with knee pain.

1. Stretching – We’ll start by stretching muscles that are most often associated with knee pain.  Hold each stretch for 30 seconds and do them several times a day to maximize their benefits.

Gentle Quad Stretch                                     Advanced Quad Stretch

Calf Stretch (back leg)

2. Mobility – If you want the knee joint to be stable that means you want the hips and ankles to be mobile.  Any limited range of motion in the hips or ankles has to be made up at the knee.  This leads to problems.  As you can see on yourself, the hips and ankles were designed to move in many directions.  The knees, not so much .  Repeat each movement 10 – 15 times.

Hip Mobility (hurdle step over a bench)

Ankle Mobility (with the toes elevated gently push the knees over the toes)

3. Activating – The tissues above and below the knee joint can typically become dysfucntional when a few specific muscles are not doing their job.  The glutes mainly.  In this case you want to try and wake these muscles up with a few activation exercises.  Again do about 10 – 15 reps.

Glute Bridge (be sure to squeeze your butt cheeks at the top)

One legged Dead Lift (notice I bend from the hip and do not lean forward at the spine)

Conclusion - This is nowhere near a complete list of the strategies you can use for dealing with knee pain.  These are just a few of the simple lo-tech solutions I use when dealing with clients whom suffer.  Next time I’ll break out a few toys and show some of the more “mid-tech” tricks.

Until then, post any questions below and I’ll be sure to answer them promptly.

Simple laws of nature.

If you stress an organism that organism will either …

1.  Adapt to the stress and eventually grow stronger.

2.  Die

When we look at our lives under a giant microscope we are all just simple organisms moving about the earth like cultures in a petri dish.  We might like to think we are more complex but in the grand scheme of things we are just living, breathing, adapting piles of tissue.

Billions of dollars are spent on fitness information products every year.  With all the new books and information that come out every month its a wonder how anyone decides what is the right or wrong way to go about the whole thing.

I think people like to be confused when it comes to fitness.  It gives them an excuse not to be accountable for their own well being.

Fitness is hard but simple.  Stress your body as a whole.  Give it time to adapt.  Repeat.

Does anyone disagree?  I would love to know what people think.

Been working at your desk all day?

Playing video games for way longer than you should be?

Hunched over a text book studying for hours on end?

Chances are you either feel or will feel neck pain at some point during your career as a full time geek.

A while back I did some serious damage to my own neck.  Only this came as a result of being in a submission fighting tournament, not poor posture.  You see,  I was put into a very painful neck crank and instead of “tapping out” I tried to withstand the pain for as long as possible or until I gained a better position.  End result, I won the match but spent the better part of 3 months afterward rehabbing my neck.

Till this day I have to be very careful not to aggravate my neck during my workouts.

Here are 5 of my favorite exercises I use to keep my neck and shoulders mobile and pain free.

1. Levator Stretch:

Sitting in your chair or on a bench, reach one arm back and around your body.  Tilt your chin and point your nose to your opposite hip.  With your free hand, place it on the back of your head and apply gentle pressure.  You should hold each side for at least 30 seconds.

2. Thoracic Mobility:

I use a half foam roller but 2 tennis balls taped together will work just as well.   Start at your mid back, roll back for 2 or 3 repetitions keeping your hips down.  You should then move the roller up your back towards your shoulder blades and repeat this process 2 or 3 more times.  (Do NOT try this on your lower back.)

3. Face Down Touch Down:

Lay face down on a bench.  Keeping your thumbs facing the ceiling, raise your arms above your head like a football referee calling a touch down.  Perform 10-15 repetitions.

4. Wall Slide:

Back against the wall keeping contact with your head, shoulders, hands, and elbows.  Slide your arms up the wall as high as you can go and then bring them back down without losing contact with the wall.  (You should feel this between the shoulder blades.)

5. I Give Ups:

Seated or standing.  Raise your arms above your head.  Then shrug your shoulders.  Perform about 10-15 repetitions.

Military Pressing?

Bench Pressing?

What good are those if you can not press your own bodyweight off of the floor?  If you need variety in your program check these pushups out.

Starting from the ground up, the glute bridge is by far one of the most important exercises that you should master.

For you beginners the glute bridge is one of those fundamental exercises that teaches your body how to stabilize and recruit those glute muscles that are far too often neglected.

For you experienced lifters the glute bridge is a great warm up and can be used prior to your workout in order to ensure proper firing of those gluteal muscles when appropriate.  I highly recommend this if you are prone to knee or low back pain as the glutes play a big role in protecting the joints above and below.

Dig your heels into the mat.  Really squeeze your but cheeks at the top.  You should be making a 90 degree angle between your lower and upper leg.

Primary muscles worked.

• Glutes
• Spinal Erectors
• Hamstrings