Six Essential Exercises For Knee Arthritis
Knee arthritis is a condition that many adults over 40 struggle with. Many people with knee pain and soreness from arthritis are worried about exercises making their arthritis worse. The key to treating knee arthritis isn’t avoiding exercise—it’s doing the right exercises. In this article we’ll look at 6 essential exercises that protect your knees while keeping you active.
The Glute Bridge
Weak glutes is a primary contributor to knee pain and arthritis in adults. The glute bridge is a great way to build strength in your glutes while minimizing impact at the knee. This makes it a safe and effective exercise for knee arthritis in adults.
Clamshells
The glute medius muscle is smaller muscle of the glute complex. It controls a lot of side to side movement at the knee, especially when standing. This makes the clamshell an important exercise for knee arthritis. This simple movement is a great way to target the glute med with no impact at the knee. You can find other exercises that target the glute med at the link below.
Best Exercises For Your Glute Med
Toe Taps
The toe tap exercise is one of my favorite exercises to also target the glute med while building single leg strength and improving balance. These three benefits make it a great choice to help protect your knees.
The Banded Hip Hinge
The hip hinge is a great exercise for knee arthritis for a number of reasons. First, it engages your glutes and hamstrings (which helps protect your knees). Second, this movement pattern teaches you how to shift the impacts of your daily life to your hips (rather than your knees). It’s also the foundation for a lot of strength exercises that help with joint pain in adults. For such a simple exercise, there is a lot to think about to perform correctly. Learn how to perform the perfect hip hinge at the link below:
How To Perform The Hip Hinge
The Step Up
The single leg step up is a low impact exercise that build single leg strength to protect your knees. It’s also a functional movement, meaning it helps you build strength to perform real world activities (like climbing stairs). It’s also very easy to progress and regress, meaning there is a variation for EVERY ability level. All this makes it a great exercise for knee arthritis.
The Air Squat
Believe it or not, the squat is one of the most beneficial exercises for managing knee arthritis because it strengthens the muscles that support and stabilize the joint—especially the quadriceps, hamstrings, and glutes. Stronger muscles help reduce stress on the knees, improve joint alignment, and make everyday movements like standing, climbing stairs, or getting out of a chair easier and less painful. Like the hinge, there is a lot to pay attention to when performing the squat. Learn how to perform the perfect squat at the link below: