Stop Knee Pain Now! 5 Exercises To Strengthen Your Knees

Five of the best home exercises for knee pain presented by a doctor of physical therapy. Perfect for beginners and those experiencing acute pain in their knee. Strengthen and stabilize your knee joint with 5 simple exercises for your quads, hamstrings, and hips.
Increasing the strength and function of the muscles that act on the knee joint is a great way to decrease pain, and improve function. Now when we talk about the mechanics of the knee, it’s a relatively simple joint. It flexes (bends) and extends (straightens) and that’s about it. The muscles that are primarily responsible for these two actions include the quadriceps, hamstrings, and one of your calf muscles. Increasing strength and function in these muscles has been proven to have a positive effect on decreasing knee pain.

However, as a doctor of physical therapy and a trained movement specialist, we are taught to find the CAUSE of pain, not just the location. Often times knee pain is simply a manifestation of faulty mechanics either higher or lower in the leg. It’s actually your hip and ankle that primarily determine where your knee joint bends and straightens and therefore play a bigger role in the mechanics at the joint. Improving strength and stability in these areas is vital in knee rehab and decreasing pain in the knee joint.

Presented in this video are the best exercises to increase strength of the muscles that flex and extend your knee as well as those that play a key factor in knee joint mechanics and function.

(2:42) QUAD SET: a simple, sustained contraction to the quadriceps muscle to increase strength and voluntary firing.

(3:43) STRAIGHT LEG RAISE: adding hip flexion to the quad contraction is an effective way to strengthen the knee.

(4:55) SHORT ARC QUAD: adding slight flexion and contracting the quad into terminal extension can be an effective means of strengthening as well as getting the knee joint used to moving again.

(5:59) BRIDGES: Great way to increase glute and hamstring strength without introducing potentially painful motion at the knee.

(7:10) SIDELYING HIP ABDUCTION: arguably the most important hip muscle in terms of knee health and biomechanics.