Written By: Tania Tarafdar | Updated : February 25, 2016 10:08 AM IST
Do your knees hurt every time you walk, climb stairs or kneel down to squat at the gym? Is that knee pain keeping you from exercising because you fear that it will increase the pain? While there can be many causes of knee pain, you need to take care that you do not stress them out during your workout session.
Exercises to avoid
Ensure that you never bend your knees to the point you stick your knees past your toes. Doing this can put a lot of pressure on your knee cap. If you have chronic knee problems, then avoid performing exercises like lunges, leg-press, full-arc knee extensions and deep squats. Here's how these exercises can hurt your knees. These exercises, when done improperly, can further aggravate your knee pain.
Exercises to perform
You can replace the regular squats and lunges exercises with a few activities listed by Sagar Pednekar, fitness expert Gold s Gym India. What s more, they will strengthen your knees and help avoid knee problems in future.
Partial squats
You can suffer from knee pain if your quads are weak. So, strengthen them with the partial squats. Stand with your feet hip-width apart keeping your toes forward. Slowly lower yourself down bending at your hips. You can keep a chair about 12 behind you and lower yourself till you are half way down to the chair. Keep your abs tight and slowly come back to the starting position. Do 8-10 repetitions of this 2-3 times a week.
Step-ups
Your hamstrings are next set of muscles that need to be strong to bend your knees properly and step-ups help target the area. Use a block, bench or staircase and step up onto the step with your right foot. Tap on the step with your left foot and then lower. When you step up, make sure that your knee is over your ankle. Do this with the other leg and complete 14-15 rounds of this exercise. Just ensure that the height of the step is not more than the height of your knee.
Hamstring stretch
The hamstring stretch will improve the mobility of your hips and knees. Raise your left leg straight towards your torso and hold your left foot with your left hand. Remain in this position till you can feel the stretch in the back of your thigh. Then do this with your other leg. That completes one round. Do 10 to 15 sets of this exercise.
Static squats
This squat variation will strengthen not only your knees but also engage your quadriceps. To perform a static squat, you can take the support of a fixed object or a wall. Hold the wall with your hands fully extended in front of you. Keep your elbows straight. Now, slowly lower yourself as such that you are sitting in a chair. Go down only till your knees are bent at a right angle, not beyond that. Your knees shouldn t cross the toe line and keep your back straight. Come back to the starting position and complete 15-20 rounds of this. Perform these yoga poses to deal with arthritic knee pain.
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