If you’ve been an athlete or fitness enthusiast for any length of time, it’s highly likely you’ve dealt with knee pain before. Although they are the largest joints in the human body, among the strongest, and key to all forms of movement, the knees are vulnerable to many kinds of injury. This is partly due to their complex structure and partly because of just how often we use our knees. Whether from a traumatic impact or simple overuse, a torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), damage to your meniscus, patellar tendinitis, or another knee condition could put you on the sidelines for weeks or more. The best way to lower your odds of all of these kinds of knee damage is with a well-thought-out leg exercise program.
At JAG Physical Therapy, we’re passionate about taking care of patients with athletic interests from all across the New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania area. Our return-to-sport rehabilitation services will get you back on the field, and with injury prevention, we’ll help you lower your odds of future issues with your knees. Book an appointment today to get started or see more information below on how to strengthen your knees for injury avoidance.
What Are the Common Causes of Knee Injuries?
Of course, it’s possible to injure your knee with a single accident. A collision on the playing field, a slip on ice, or a trip on the stairs can cause lasting pain and immobility in an instant. Nevertheless, even more common reasons that the knee joint gets injured are subtle forms of damage over time.
Improper running form can expose the knees to more force than is necessary. Localized weakness, shortening, or other deficiency somewhere in the leg muscles can likewise fail to protect the knees. And repetitive usage causes wear and tear over time. If you are a runner or take part in a sport where you are in constant motion, such as basketball, this last factor can affect you to an especially high degree. All of these sources of knee pain can go unnoticed until there’s an injury, so the best thing is to be proactive in safeguarding your knee joints.
What Are the Best Exercises for Knee Injury Prevention?
Many of the exercises in a knee injury prevention workout will be familiar to anyone who’s attended a gym. The key is to use them in the right combination while maintaining good form. Not just one muscle group, but all of the surrounding muscles (including the quadriceps, hamstrings, gastrocnemius, and soleus), must be built up to support the knees.
While a physical therapist can make more personalized recommendations to you, effective exercises to prevent knee pain include the following:
- Squats and Lunges: These two basic and very popular leg exercises should be undertaken with similar form. In the starting position, make sure your feet are shoulder-width apart, toes pointed outward by 20 to 30 degrees. Take a deep breath before initiating movement and look forward or slightly down as a means of keeping your chest upward and level and avoiding rounding your shoulders. You should put pressure on your heels and exert your glutes as you return to start. For squats specifically, don’t go down too close to the floor or let your knees move inward.
- Step-ups and Step-downs: Your first consideration for step-ups and step-downs should be selecting a step to use. Higher means more challenge, but going too high leads to awkward form; you can do more repetitions on a lower step if needed. It’s primarily the leg that is on the step that you should engage, with as little assistance from the leg behind as possible. Plant the ball of your foot firmly and, while you can step quickly, you’ll get greater eccentric exercise if you lower yourself slowly after each step.
- Leg Extensions and Hamstring Curls: Whether performed standing, on the floor, or using a machine, you’ll always want to engage your core muscles as much as possible during leg extensions or hamstring curls. This is to keep your hips and upper body still so that you can be sure the right leg muscles are doing the work.
- Single Leg Balancing: Surprisingly, one of the best ways you can maintain your balance on one leg for longer isn’t by focusing on your leg, your foot, or even your torso, but on controlling your breathing. Extending and flexing the raised leg, especially doing gentle knee raises, can add to this workout and help you bring stability to both legs at the same time. Finally, a number of poses from yoga and tai chi involve one-legged balancing – you can look into these and experiment to find some you like to add variance to your balance routine.
How Often Should You Do Knee Injury Prevention Exercises?
As with all workouts, if you start strengthening exercises for knee stability, you should stay consistent and balance training and resting. Moreover, if you are doing so to rehabilitate an existing injury, pace and gradual increase in intensity are necessary so that you don’t make your condition worse. Most people should exercise their knee joint region twice a week when starting out or dealing with a musculoskeletal condition, moving up to three times a week after making progress.
When Should You Seek Professional Help for Knee Injury Prevention?
Whether or not you are an athlete, it may be a good idea to see a physical therapist regarding your knee joints if you have recurrent symptoms from a past injury, you notice you move this joint awkwardly, or if you enjoy any activity that carries knee pain risk, such as skating at an ice rink. Thanks to PT techniques such as gait analysis, you will be informed of irregularities with your musculoskeletal system or your biomechanics that may expose your knees to injury. And with both professional advice and more direct PT techniques like manual therapy or dry needling, you can correct these issues in order to walk, run, jump, or dance better and more safely.
Protect Your Knees with Expert Guidance from JAG Physical Therapy
At JAG Physical Therapy, we take the utmost care when it comes to treating knee injuries. However, we also want to empower our patients to avoid hurting their knee joints in the first place. Injury prevention is one of the top specializations of our skilled therapy team – schedule an appointment at your closest JAG PT location to get started protecting your knees in the long run.