knee exercises Archives - Life in a day of a Physical Therapist

Isometric exercises help reduce pain and improve mobility in cases like arthritis, hip pain, and knee pain. This is the first exercise that a PT will perform to assess muscle strength and level of pain. Therefore, Isometrics are not only important as pre-operative measures but also help in speedy recovery after injury or surgery. The key to isometric exercise is to have no visible movement. Basically, you are trying to contract a muscle and hold that contraction for a few seconds in a pain-free range. Gradually, you should be able to hold the contraction for a longer period and perform a stronger contraction – this is how it progresses. My previous article described isometric exercises in detail. In this article, I am going to discuss important isometric exercises for hip and knee pain. Isometric exercises that help in hip and knee pain are quads, hip abduction and adduction, hip flexion, and hip extension. I’ll explain each exercise in detail below. Continue reading “Four Isometric Exercises to Reduce Hip and Knee Pain”

I talked about Knee arthritis in detail in my previous article. Today, I want to discuss important knee exercises. The aim of exercises for arthritis is mainly to ease the (knee) pain and increase muscle strength. If the muscles surrounding a joint are strong than your joints are protected and well-cushioned. A person is less likely to put more force on a joint when he or she has strong muscles. This is not only true for knee arthritis but works similarly for pain, tendon or ligaments tear, any post and pre-operative surgery of a joint, etc.. Exercise is your answer. Remember, there are thousands (not literally of course) different exercises you can do for knee and there are a million modifications (again no literally) can be made in positions, adding weight or not, making it more challenging vs not. The aim here is to discuss the most important exercises for the knee. These are kind of your MUST DO to achieve higher strength and reduce pain. So let’s start!! Continue reading “Seven Knee Exercises to Improve Strength”