Video and Transcript: Exercises for Knee Pain

Okay, so here we go! I've got a few exercises to show you. 

The first one, pretty common, and it's called a quadricep set. So, what you're doing is you’re taking your quadricep muscles and you're just tightening up and pushing your knee down into the surface. I recommend doing this on the floor if you can. Your bed might be okay too if it's not too cushiony.

What you want to do is you want to hold the contractions for about five to ten seconds and then release. Now, if this is too painful, what I recommend is you take a little towel, put it under the knee, and then you gently push your knee down into the towel. That should feel more comfortable. If needed, you can use another towel. Make it a little bit higher.

Alright. So, your heel is supposed to stay on the ground, and you’re tightening up your quad, holding it for about five to ten seconds, and then releasing. I recommend that you do that about ten times, maybe a couple of times a day. So, that's the first exercise. That's called the quad set.

Next exercise is called a straight leg raise. For this exercise, what you want to do is the leg that you're treating — and sometimes people have knee pain on both knees, so you might be doing this on both knees — what you want to do is you want to tighten that quad, bring your toes back toward your nose, and then lift the leg up about five to six inches, nothing really major. If you have low back pain, my recommendation is that you do this laying down. Okay. So, one knee is bent up. Toes are up in the air. Quadriceps muscles nice and tight. If you need to, keep your belly towards your spine just to stabilize your lower back. And then, you lift, hold for about five to ten seconds, and then back down again. You want to repeat this about 10 times. Really great exercise for patellofemoral pain.

The last exercise that I'm going to show you is a butt strengthening exercise. So, one of the things that happens is that, with patellofemoral syndrome, your knee cap might be sliding or moving a little bit out to the side. What's actually happening is your femur bone is rolling in relative to that kneecap. So, what can really help is having good, strong glute muscles because your deeper glute muscles are your hip rotators, and they rotate your hip out, which will prevent it from rotating in so that that kneecap doesn't slide a little bit and doesn't rub up against the top of that edge of that femur bone.

So, what you want to do is you want to lay on your side. Bottom leg is bent for balance. Top leg is straight. I like to think about having you push your heel away from your body a little bit so that you're not — your trunk is not sunk down into your bed or your floor. So, you think about pushing that hip away from your body. Bring that heel back just a little bit. And then, you're going to lift, hold for five to ten seconds, and then lower back down. So, this is a really good butt strengthening exercise. 

So, these are three basic exercises that we like to give for patients that are — that we’re treating for knee pain. Now, if your pain is really, really, really severe, then — you know — start with one, and then move gradually to the next one, and then eventually add the third one in. But, if you find that you try doing them and they're just too painful and you can't tolerate it, then I would really strongly recommend that you get to a physical therapist so they can evaluate and make sure that these are the right exercises for you. 

Hope this helps! Good luck with your knee pain. If you have any questions, definitely put them below. If you can, I’d love a thumbs up if you like this video. Have a good one! Bye.