ONE Best Leg Strengthening Exercise for Seniors (No Knee Pain!)

what's the best strengthening exercise for seniors well the number one best strengthening exercise for seniors is absolutely the squat and the reason for that is that you squat every single day from getting out of a chair getting off the toilet getting out of bed stooping down to pick something up off the floor stooping down to get something from the cabinets underneath the counter all of those require some version of the squat but a lot of seniors find it difficult to go down into a squatting movement either because of knee arthritis or hip arthritis or back pain it can become painful for seniors to do squats and furthermore sometimes their doctors even tell them you should never squat particularly if you have knee arthritis or maybe even if you've had a back problem doctors will tell you not to do a squat at the gym where you load weight on your spine and people will take that to mean that I should never squat but squatting is a very functional movement and you need to be able to do it for lots of different tasks so wouldn't it be nice if you were able to do it comfortably with less pain hi I'm Dr Dave candy and in this video I'm going to explain several different variations of the squat that seniors can do without their knees bothering them and without their back bothering them I'm going to start with the easiest version and then go down to the more complex versions at the at the end so the easiest simplest version of the squat is just doing a standing mini knee Bend and so it's a mini squat now with any squat it's important to first get your stance correct because not everyone is designed to squat with their toes straight ahead and so if you're someone who you naturally stand and your feet point out a little bit then you're gonna need to toe out a little bit when you Squat and trying to squat with your toes pointed straight ahead is either going to limit your depth of how far you can go or it's going to cause knee pain or impingement in your hips so finding the right stance is important and if you turn your feet all the way out and see how far you can go you'll notice I can get mine pretty far out and then you turn in as far as you can go you'll notice mine don't go too much in past neutral that gives you an indication of whether you're someone who is more naturally turned out or more naturally turned in and you don't want to force a straight ahead alignment you want to squat in sort of your natural position that's going to put your hips in the correct alignment to allow you to get the most depth possible out of your squat without things hurting or without using improper biomechanics in your knees now after you've found that it's important to consider which muscles you're using when you squat when you squat it uses a combination of your thigh muscles or your quadriceps as well as your hip extensors largely your glutes but some your hamstrings as well and depending on how you squat that affects which muscles are activated the most if you tend to squat with a lot of weight on your toes where your knees are going forwards that puts a lot more pressure on your thighs and more compression force on your kneecaps and if you squat with your weight more back on your heels that puts more emphasis on your glutes now you notice you do have to lean your lower back forwards a little bit more in order to do that but as long as you're not rounding your spine as long as you're keeping a fairly straight spine as you're putting your hips back that's perfectly okay to do now when you transition that into doing a mini squat you start out by finding that correct position and then just going through a little mini knee mend and I tell people to start out with this with not so much thinking about bending their knees but thinking about sticking their butt backwards so start out find your stance and then just kind of push your butt out behind you so that your weight goes onto your heels now as you're doing this little rocking movement just go to the depth that you feel comfortable going you may have to kind of play around with your feet a little bit in fact you may kind of feel your legs move a little bit underneath of you and just kind of follow the path of least resistance go where it's easiest for you to do that see it from the front behind your stance hips back then just a little bit of a hip hinge where you're sticking your bottom back and your knees will naturally Bend as you're doing this but you're not thinking about bending your knees you're thinking about pushing your hips back now the next step if you're able to do that little mini squat which largely most people are able to do a small squat but let's go into the functional activity of getting out of a chair so to do that you start doing the same little hip hinge that you did before and stick your bottom Back Lean your trunk forward come down onto the chair then to come back up you want to have your heels close to you lean your trunk forward so that you get your center of gravity lined over your feet and then come back up now notice the foot knee and hip alignment are all going in one line that doesn't necessarily have to be a forward line but wherever your hips naturally fall you want your feet and your knees to go in that same angle so you've got a nice strong Pillar of Strength and everything's lined up the same now a common mistake that people will make when they're standing up is that they allow their knees to kind of cave inwards and that takes you out of that strong alignment so if you are someone who naturally toes out then when you go to stand up from a chair or when you do the upwards motion of a squat you want to make sure that you're keeping that ankle knee hip alignment and so standing back up pushing your hips back coming down Lean Forward get your center of gravity over your feet keep your knees turned out and push up I'll show that from the side find your stance push the hips back Lean Forward come up now when you're really far back in a chair you'll notice you've got a long distance to cover here so it is a good idea to scoot forward get your feet underneath of you and then come up and push your hips back and come back down now to make that more of a quad workout you can come a little bit more vertical put your weight a little bit more on the front of your foot and you'll get more quad strength here versus when you're leaned a little bit more forwards you'll get more glute strength But realize the more forwards you go on your foot the more effort that shifts to your quads and the more compression force it puts on your kneecaps so find a range that's comfortable for you whether it's having your weight way back on your heels and slightly more lean forwards or whether it's having your trunk a little bit more upright wait a little bit more on your toes and using more quad Force so that's the second exercise now what if you're a little bit more active senior and you're someone who regularly engages in exercise you don't have any trouble getting up from a chair and you don't have any trouble getting off the toilet how do you move to a higher level of a squat well in that case you'd start doing more of a traditional squat exercise and in that case you still treat the biomechanics the same so you find your squatting stance start by pushing your hips back and then keep the knees driven out in an angle equal to your toes and then you just sink down to a deeper depth now only go as far as you can comfortably make sure you're not at a point where you're losing your balance or also where you can't get back up and then coming back up again you want to think about keeping your knees driven out in line with your toes you don't want to allow your knees to knock in that way not only will that limit your depth but it can also create knee pain or even hip pain so find your stance squat down or from the side view find your stance push the knees out hips back and then come down now if you can do that then it's time you can start adding weight you can either hold dumbbells at your side or hold a dumbbell at your chest or even put light weight across your shoulders although that does load your spine more if you put a barbell on your back so for most people particularly if you've got osteopenia or osteoporosis it may be better to hold a weight down at your sides or hold a weight in front of your chest so those are three different variations of the squat that seniors can do and how you can do it without aggravating your knees or your back so hopefully you did find this video helpful if you did give it a like And subscribe to our channel so you can get notified of our future videos thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video

Channel: More 4 Life

Views: 2,389,861

Keywords: physical therapy, st louis, saint louis, More 4 Life, manual physical therapy, physical therapist, best leg strengthening exercise for seniors, best leg strengthening exercises for seniors, leg strengthening exercises for seniors, leg strengthening exercises for beginners, leg strengthening exercises for beginners and seniors, leg strengthening exercises for bad knees, strengthening exercises for seniors, best strengthening exercises for seniors

Id: Yuavzx81Vek

Length: 10min 37sec (637 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 05 2023