Stop Knee Pain Now! 5 Exercises To Strengthen Your Knees

what's up guys hey Jer dextran here doctor of physical therapy tone and tightened calm and these are the best exercises to strengthen and stabilize your knee part 1 let's get into them right now [Music] all right you guys hey thank you so much for joining me today here on tone and tighten let's talk about your knees today I hope that what I share maybe helps you to feel better helps you out of some of the pain that you might be experiencing if you do like this video do me a favor and like this video hit that thumbs up button down below also if you haven't done so already hit that red button in the corner to subscribe to tone and tighten right here on YouTube okay so let's talk about knee pain so I've been getting some requests from you guys lately some of the comments that you've been leaving in my video say hey my knees hurt what can I do about my knee pain what are some exercises for my knee pain things of that nature I thought that's a great topic for a video started writing down a few of my favorite exercises and before I knew it that list was like 12 exercises long I decided to break that up into two parts and so you kind of get phase 1 here we're gonna go over about 5 exercises and then you get phase 2 in a later video that are a little bit more aggressive so this is kind of the beginner phase 1 hopefully you can progress into some of those phase 2 exercises if you're looking for maybe a little bit more aggressive exercises check the link down below for the link to that phase 2 video so okay let's get into this when we talk about the knee and when we talk about strengthening the knee I tell I tell people you know the knee is a pretty dumb joint like if you think about it and the grand scheme of things like your knee flexes and it extends and that's about all that you get and so really when we talk about strengthening the knee joint we talked about quads there's four quad muscles we talked about the three hamstring muscles and then you also get one of your calf muscles that actually crosses that knee joint that contributes to knee flexion so really it's those three muscles that we have to train however when we talk about stability of the knee joint and when we talk about where the knee joint is in space and the biomechanics of the knee joint and why your knee is painful it's actually your hips and your ankles have more of a role in where your knee goes for example and I think you guys can see that let me check so you couldn't see that quick camera angle change and so well the knee only flexes and extends it's actually the hip and the ankle joint that are going to control where that knee flexes an expense so not only do we want to strengthen the knee joint but we also want to straight strengthen and stabilize the hip and the ankle joints in order put that knee in a better alignment so we're gonna look at the muscles of the knee quads hamstrings and then some hip strengthening as well I've got five they're coming your way right now our first exercise is fairly simple but very important it's an isometric contraction of the quads or a quad set simply put you're going to sit with your leg out straight in front of you and then you're going to contract your quad muscles so this one right here if I fire that I hope you guys can see that and then if I relax it what I tell people is as you're sitting try to push your knee down into the floor down into the mat whatever it is that you're sitting on so you're going to fire that quad push push push hold for about a three to five second count and then relax it's a really simple exercise but it's really important more of like a neural component to it basically establishing a mind muscle connection to that muscle so that we can fire it voluntarily as needed and so that's exercise number one quad set so I'll typically tell people to perform about ten reps of about three to five second holds if that feels good feel free to do twenty that still feels good do thirty so up to three sets of ten five second holds on that quad set next one and we're gonna take that a step further so that's a great way to fire the quad one of those quads will a part of one of those quads serves to flex the hip and so we add a hip flexion to that quad set to make that contraction even better and so that's going to be a straight leg race your first step is to perform that quad set so hit that quad set contract that quad knee goes down into the floor and then what you're going to do helps to sit back just a little bit so quad set and then we're gonna raise that leg oh about a foot or so about maybe 12 inches up off the table and then right back down and so quad set so we're going to fire that raise about 12 inches and then right back down you've got to be able to maintain that quad contraction so meaning I want your need to be as straight as possible sometimes people will do this they have what they call a lag to it so they'll start to raise and then the leg will come up you'll see that that's a lot different I want you to set that quad fire that and then I want you to lift that whole straight leg raise up off of the tables fire leg up and then right back down same thing applies here shoot for ten if ten feels good two sets of ten and even up to three sets of ten on these straight leg raises we'll be good okay cool next let's let's introduce a little bit of band into the knee and to do that I'm going to perform what we call a short arc quad um I've got a foam roll here under my knee if you have a foam roll that works great if not you can double up a pillow or a blanket or a towel over things like that just to slip underneath your knee all work well so there's a little bit of bend in my knee ten maybe fifteen degrees now what I'm going to do is fire that quad muscle to straighten my leg out you'll notice that my knee did not come up off of the foam roll basically I'm just using these quad muscles to straighten my knee from that short Park or from that ten to fifteen degrees of flexion all the way to straight so it's this small motion but your focus is right here on that quad muscle getting that to fire getting that to contract nice and slow up nice and slow down you're gonna do a set of ten of those if one set of ten feels good do 20 if that feels good up to about thirty reps on that one if you need more of a challenge you can always put a small ankle weight on the end of your down on your ankle or perform more repetitions and so there's your short our quads next so we've done a lot for your quad let's get into your hamstrings and your hips to do that I like to do bridges so I'm gonna slide her right down here lay on your back with your knees bent now what we're gonna do is contract the glutes contract the hamstrings to lift our hips up towards the ceiling so I'm laying down flat glute squeeze hamstrings contract hold two three and then come right back down so up hold for about a three-second count and then come right back down the focus again is smashing my butt together and squeezing my hamstring muscles while I'm up in this bridge perform ten of them ten feels good we'll go up to 20 up to 30 so up to about three sets of ten when that becomes easy the may be slightly more advanced version of this would be to get into even some single leg bridges I'm gonna extend my left leg out and now I'm just using my right hip and my right hamstring to lift my hips up off of the ground to lift my pelvis up off the ground and a little bit more aggressive requires a little bit more muscle control a little bit more muscle contraction it might be something that you have to work up into but that's a great way to get the glutes and the hamstrings firing up to three sets of ten on those bridges finally we talked at the beginning of the video about hip strength and its role in stabilizing the knee and so one of the primary muscle groups that I want to strengthen are those lateral hip muscles or the hip abductors to do that you're gonna lay down on your side right now I'm on my left side to work my right leg left leg is bent right leg is out straight from this position what I'm going to do is contract the muscles kind of behind my hip right here like right on the side of my glutes to raise that leg up towards the ceiling and then right back down so it looks just like that I tell people to lead with your heel and so if you're leading with your toe you're probably contracting the wrong muscle try to try to lead with your heel and then don't just pull it straight up but pull it up and back behind you so it actually looks a little bit more like that I'm pulling up and back as I'm performing that leg lift to the side again that's called a side-lying abduction I tell people perform ten of those ten feels good perform two sets and if two sets of ten feels good perform 3 sets of 10 on that one all right you guys so there you have them five great exercises to strengthen and start to stabilize that knee joint again this is kind of phase one for beginners if you're looking for more exercises be sure to click on phase two check out the description down below to see those I hope you enjoyed this video you guys if you did go ahead and leave me that thumbs up down below thanks again for doing that also if you do have any comments or suggestions or questions about anything that we talked about in this video please leave that down below as well hey thank you so much for watching if you haven't done so already hit this circle button right here to subscribe to tone and tighten on YouTube right over here there's your phase two exercises to strengthen and stabilize that knee joint down in that corner there's one more that you might enjoy that you might benefit from I hope to see you again soon thanks again for watching here on tone and tighten

Channel: Tone and Tighten

Views: 3,401,973

Rating: 4.9367776 out of 5

Keywords: exercises for knee pain, knee pain exercises, best exercises for knee pain, knee pain exercises at home, home exercises for knee pain, physical therapy knee pain, how to treat knee pain at home, knee pain, knee pain relief, knee pain relief exercises, physical therapy, tone and tighten, jared beckstrand

Id: ikt6NME0k9E

Length: 8min 59sec (539 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 09 2020