Essential Exercises for Knee Pain Relief

If you currently have knee pain, you probably would like to get rid of it. Knee pain can range from mild to debilitating and it can really affect your life. Knee Pain doesn't have to rule your life though, and there is a way to treat the pain and improve your function and your life. Even if you've had knee pain for years or if you've been told you have osteoarthritis and need a knee replacement, there is still a way to decrease the pain and improve your function! Surgery is not the only option and it's usually not the best option!

Strengthening the hips and core can help reduce knee pain tremendously because if the hips and core are strong, less stress is placed on the knee joints during activity. By strengthening the muscles around the joints above the knees, you are offloading the pressure on the knees. It's also important to improve single leg stability and balance because a lot of the activities we participate in, including walking, are done on just one leg at a time. The other thing that is extremely important when working on building strength and decreasing knee pain is to progress the exercises! If you do the same exercises over and over, they will eventually become easy and you won't get any more benefit out of them. It's important to always work on challenging yourself in order to build strength.

Here are 5 of my favorite Knee Pain Exercises that I often start with! 

Sidelying Hip Abduction with a Band. Lie on your side with a band around your ankles. Keeping your legs in line with your body, lift the top leg towards the ceiling. Make sure to keep your toes pointed away from your body and do not let them rotate up towards the ceiling. 

Side Plank Clamshell. Place a band around your thighs and lie on your side with your knees bent. Lift up onto your forarm and your knees. Keeping your feet together, lift the top knee up towards the ceiling and back down.

Fire Hydrant. Start in a hands and knees position with a band around your thighs. Lift one leg out to the side and then back down.

Quadruped Hip Extension. Start in a hands and knees position with a band around your thighs. Lift one leg back behind you towards the ceiling. Keep the leg you're lifting bent to 90 degrees.

Bear Plank Hip Abduction. Start in a hands and knees position with a band around your thighs. Slightly lift your knees off of the floor. Pull your knees apart and back together.

Try doing 2-3 sets of 8-10 reps of each of these exercises. You can start doing them 3 times per week and then increase that to 5-6 times per week.

Be consistent if you want to see results! It can be discouraging if you don't notice improvement right away, but it can take 8-12 weeks of consistent strengthening to build muscle, so just be patient. 

If you are looking for a comprehensive knee pain program, check out my 10-week program HERE. You can also get the program as a part of my Strength and Mobility Membership.