knee

 

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

Gentle Quad Stretch                                     Advanced Quad Stretch

 calf 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.

hurdle step      hurdle step      hurdle step

Hip Mobility (hurdle step over a bench)

ankle mobility       ankle mobility

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        glute bridge

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

uldl        uldl

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. 

 

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