Have you experienced knee pain while walking climbing stairs or moving about your daily tasks in this video I’ll share how you can start living pain-free by doing these four simple knee strengthening exercises every day knee pain is a common problem that many of our patients in the clinic experience this pain surfaces during daily tasks and can really put a damper on our patients mobility and Independence but why do our knees often start to ache as we ache age knee pain can occur over time because we lose strength in the
muscles around our knees this underuse can lead to problems as the muscles experience atrophy and become weaker the Golden Rule with muscles is the old cliche if you don’t use it you lose it in our modern lives were often seated for extended periods of time each day whether that’s driving a car sitting at a desk or lounging in a cozy recliner all of these activities aren’t exactly challenging your leg muscles as the muscles around your knees weaken the aches and pains start even if you’ve been told the pain is from arthritis or
some other ailment it’s important note that you can reverse these aches and pains through strengthening the following four exercises are specifically designed to strengthen the muscle groups responsible for supporting your knees this includes the obvious ones your quads and your hamstrings but it also include things like your hip flexors and your hip extensors these aren’t anatomic Ally close to your knees but they are responsible for your leg stability by strengthening these muscle groups you’ll see a reduction in your
pain and start feeling more confident walking climbing stairs and moving about your daily activities so let’s get started the first Exercise Works the most obvious muscle group that relates to your knees your quads you can see your quads here and exactly how they go down and attach to your knee this exercise is called the long Arc quad or La AQ for short you may have seen this one before and it’s especially great because it can be done from just about anywhere you’ll start in a seated position and you’ll begin by extending
your leg straight holding for a few seconds and then retracting you want to focus on engaging the quad muscles you’ll definitely feel a burn while doing this exercise especially if you haven’t used these muscles specifically like this in years so you want to go ahead and repeat it start off with a set of 10 or so you should feel a good burn if you’re able to do 10 repetitions and not feel much of a burn then you can make this exercise a little bit harder by maybe adding something like an ankle weight ankle weights will just add a
little bit of extra resistance but because the ankle weight is so far away from the the fulcrum of your knee it can add more than you think so ankle weights come in different different combinations and they actually sell ankle weights that have little weights that you can put into them so just one pair of ankle weights will come with maybe five pounds of weight so you can start off with a pound and over time progressively add a little bit more to where you feel that nice fatiguing burn after 10 or 12 repetitions it’s also
important when you’re doing this that you focus on drawing your kneecap back seeing those quad muscles pop out or feeling your thigh and you you should feel them nice and firm and then releasing it under control we see a lot of patients kick out nice but then when it comes time to let it down they kind of just let it plop if you do this you’re losing out on half of the benefit you want to do these like I said 10 to 12 repetitions and two or three sets and this is one that you can do a few times a day and every day you don’t really
need a break in between days unless your muscles are sore and your body is telling you to rest next exercise I’m going to show you is sideline hip abduction now this is important because your hip abductors just kind of live on the back and the side of your hips they stabilize your upper leg which is important when you’re walking or climbing stairs because it adds to the stability ility of your knee so you’re going to start off laying on your side and you want to be all the way on your side you don’t want to be open you know
most patients they lay down and they think they’re on their side but they’re really pointed Towards the Sky a little bit you want to make sure that if you drew a line straight through the side of your hips and through the other side of your hip it’s going straight towards the ground so then you want to straighten the top leg out and leave the bottom leg bent and you want to think of a straight line being drawn all the way up your leg that continues all the way up your body because this exercise can be challenging
for some people the first thing that I see people doing when they want to cheat is they bring their leg forward as they come up so this angle is actually not a straight line think about keeping your leg back behind you and turning all the way on your side so tighten up your stomach get that nice core stability and then pick your leg up and you don’t need to go super high this is about all you need and then lower it down nice and slow you want to repeat this same about 10 to 12 repetitions or until you feel a
nice burn in the side of your leg going up controlling it back down again making sure you don’t cheat and start bringing that leg forward if that becomes a little bit too easy and you’re able to do the 10 or 12 reps and you’re not feeling a good burn then we got our friend the old ankle weight that we can put on and add a couple pounds of weight which makes all the difference in the world this is one that a lot of people will get sore from so if you do get sore give yourself that day of rest in between but once you get conditioned to
it this is also one that you you could do every day my name’s Justin by the way I’m a doctor of physical therapy and own a PT practice with seven locations across Southwest Florida if you’re finding this video helpful please like And subscribe by clicking the buttons below this really helps us continue to provide free content each week the last muscle group we’re going to Target are called the hamstrings and we’re going to do that by an exercise called hamstring Bridges you may be experienced with what
a regular glute bridge is I think everyone’s done that where you just lift your hips up hamstring bridges are just a variant of a glute bridge that are done by straightening your legs out just a little bit more to start you want to really focus on your heels for this one because by digging your heels in you’re going to put more pressure on the hamstrings to do more work so just like that bridge you’re going to keep the the stomach tight here so you don’t injure your back we don’t want to rob Peter to
pay Paul like we always say but you want to tighten your stomach and dig your heels in lift up as high as you feel comfortable without arching your back once you do that lower it back down nice and slow maybe a 1 second pause at the top do a couple of them if this is your sweet spot and this is challenging great leave it right here if you think you can handle a little bit more pressure going through the hamstrings in the back of your legs then start walking your feet out just a little bit more the further away from your hips your heels get the
more you’ll feel it in the hammies the hammies are really important because they provide the posterior or the stability on the back of your knee so you think about like a game of tug-of-war where the quads are on the front and the hamstrings are on the back and as we walk climb stairs and do other functional movements our knees have to be smooth and know which team is doing what at any given time when the quads are pulling the hamstrings are releasing and supporting and when the hamstrings are pulling the quads are releasing and
supporting and that goes back and forth with every step that you take so just like the other ones I’m going to give you 10 or 12 repetitions and two or three sets again this is one where if you’re sore and you need the rest take a day off but if you’re not it’s one that can be done every day the last exercise will bring all the muscles from the first three exercises into one what’s great about this one is that it’s a closed chain exercise closed chain exercise is weightbearing meaning that one part of
your body is in constant contact with the ground this forces your muscles to stabilize your knee in a more functional way just like this exercise most of the things that we struggle with every day are also closed chain movements what’s also great about this one is that you can hold off on it while you’re having knee pain so if you’re trying this from the beginning and your knee hurts a little bit that’s okay skip it and focus on the first three exercises that we did that that more isolated the muscles that
surround the knee and then after two or 3 weeks try adding this one back into it you may notice that now once you go back for a second time and try it after two or 3 weeks the knee pain is less or totally gone so start off with a step or a stair if you have stairs in your house you can easily do it at the first stair or two make sure you have a handrail to hold on to if you need it this step is one of the ones that you can take the little feet out of it and make it from a 6in step to an 8 in or even a 10 or a
12in step I’ll link to one of these in the description one that we like that’s stable and affordable so when you’re doing step UPS you want to make sure that on the way up you’re going nice and confident so you’re going to get the whole foot up on the step don’t have your heel hanging off the back end cuz that’s dangerous and it’s not going to allow you to use the the hamstrings and the glutes those muscles that we strengthened earlier so get the whole foot up there and drive
with your heel through the step as you push your way up nice and confident think about having a little bit more speed but stay controlled while you’re doing this on the way down think about going nice and slow with control do this about 10 times and when you’re done go ahead and switch legs confident and fast on the way up slow and controlled on the way down try not to plop and try and break your knee so that means you’re going from straight to Bent try and break your knee nice and smoothly this one you can do two or
three sets at 10 and give yourself a day off in between especially if you’re just starting this for the first time and your muscles are kind of sore the next day after doing it one very important thing to consider with these exercises is that you’ll need to work into doing them at first you’ll experience soreness and we’ll want to do them maybe three or four times a week the soreness is good and over time the soreness will slow down to the point where you can do these exercises almost every day your knees
will continue to feel stronger and your aches and pains will start to disappear if you want to learn more about how to strengthen your legs check out this video till next time [Music] hey hey hey [Music]