The Top 5 Exercises For Knee Osteoarthritis

Years ago, if you had come to me as a patient with knee pain, I would have focused on strengthening your quadricep muscles…the ones on the front of your thigh. In fact, I still hear clients saying “I just need to strengthen my quads” when I ask them what do they think would help their knee most.

Well, this is old and incomplete thinking. Researchers in Denmark, working with people in hip and knee osteoarthritis discovered that more muscles and a special type of strengthening exercise were what helped their clients to lessen their pain and need for medication and improve their function and strength.

Here are the exercises listed below:

1) Bridging

Back in the heyday of aerobic classes, this would have been a classic exercise for people to do. When Step aerobics and spinning became popular, this basic exercise and others took a backseat. Well, now we know how important it is for isolating and building our gluteus maximus. That is the largest of the muscles in the buttocks and research shows that many people were weak or were not activating this muscle as best as they could when doing functional things like climbing the stairs or getting out of a chair. This made us become “quads dominant” and put excessive stress on the knees.

https://vimeo.com/469017002  Do 2-3 sets of 10, 2-3x/week

 2)Clamshell

This exercise has become more and more popular lately for clients with hip, knee and even low back pain. It targets a very small muscle in the back of the hip so you will feel it burn as you do the exercise. This muscle helps to stabilize the pelvis and the whole lower limb when you are walking, etc.

https://vimeo.com/469019366 Do 2-3 sets of 10, 2-3x/week

3) Hip Abduction

Another mainstay of old fashioned aerobic classes. This is an excellent way to strengthen the Gluteus Medius and minimus. I have given you two options here as I think there are benefits to both. When done in sidelying, you get more ROM and work (since you are lifting against gravity) and the muscle is truly isolated. When done in standing, you have to engage the muscles on both sides of the pelvis to keep the pelvis level. This is beneficial for functional movements.

4) Sit to Stand

A modified version of a squat. It is a functional and a neuromusclar exercise which means that we are using different muscles in a well timed and co-ordinated fashion. I particular like these as I can get clients to get their butts back to sit in the chair and it allows for better form. When rising, I ask my clients to think about pressing through their heels and engaging their glutes instead of rocking forward and using momentum to get up.

5) Step Ups

Another functional and neuromuscular exercise. Again, I ask clients to concentrate on putting pressure through the heel and squeezing their glutes to get them up the stairs rather than pushing off with the calf of the leg on the lower stair.

That’s it…those are my top 5 exercise for clients with knee osteoarthritis and they are actually beneficial for clients with hip osteoarthritis too.

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