Exercises for bad knees?

[Javabean]

They ache when I'm hiking downhill and creak loudly when I go up stairs. Are there any exercises that can strengthen them so they don't wear out when I'm older?

[BrianSCohen]

So you could listen to your doctor and suffer from bad knees, or you could exercise and strengthen your knees and mitigate any issues you have. I would recommend then second. Without more information, I would be disinclined to make any suggestions. How old are you? How fit are you? Do you have any injuries or ever had knee surgery?

Knee pain going downhill and creaking are really actually minor issues in the scope of things.

[Leo41]

You don't exercise to strenghen the knees themselves, but you try to develop your thigh muscles to compensate for weak knees. I'm 67 but have had arthritic knees since I was in my mid-30s. Physical therapy has kept me from knee replacement--so far. The basic exercise is leg lifts, but there are others as well. I'm so weak that I do the exercises in a pool for the water resistance, but in physical therapy, I did them with weights attached to my ankles.

In any case, my suggestion would be to ask your doctor to write you a scrip for physical therapy. You might only need a couple of sessions. Once the therapist shows you how to do the exercises properly (very important), you can easily do them on your own regularly.

[Javabean]

Hi there, I'm female, 40, good health (except thyroid seems a little sluggish), take no meds, no surgeries, moderately active walking and hiking. I might have injured them doing squats earlier this year - I thought I was doing them right but maybe not. Maybe something else was up too. They got worse after that though and haven't gotten better yet.

I haven't seen a doctor and don't have a regular one. What kind of doctor should I look for? The PT sounds good!

[shapeup1]

I just developed pain in my knees when I go up the stairs or when I try lunges. It hurts usually after I use the elliptical.

Done mri's and they say I have a lot of arthritis (wear and tear, chondrosis)

I've seen 2 different docs (the doc for the Blue Jays and a rheumatologist) and the want me to do straight leg raises to strengthen my quads, and lots of stretching. I should doing stuff that inflames them like : lunges, seated leg raises, squats.

Should not put weight on the bended knee.....

[shapeup1]

Originally Posted by Javabean

Hi there, I'm female, 40, good health (except thyroid seems a little sluggish), take no meds, no surgeries, moderately active walking and hiking. I might have injured them doing squats earlier this year - I thought I was doing them right but maybe not. Maybe something else was up too. They got worse after that though and haven't gotten better yet.

I haven't seen a doctor and don't have a regular one. What kind of doctor should I look for? The PT sounds good!

I would see a sports Doctor, rheumatologist or and orthopedic specialist and they'll propably send you to a physiotherapist or give you exercises........

[Javabean]

Thank you all so much for the information, I'm glad to hear that it's worked out for others. I'll start looking for a doctor who will teach me the proper exercises. I really don't want to consider drugs or surgery until I have tried that first!

[BrianSCohen]

Originally Posted by Javabean

Hi there, I'm female, 40, good health (except thyroid seems a little sluggish), take no meds, no surgeries, moderately active walking and hiking. I might have injured them doing squats earlier this year - I thought I was doing them right but maybe not. Maybe something else was up too. They got worse after that though and haven't gotten better yet.

I haven't seen a doctor and don't have a regular one. What kind of doctor should I look for? The PT sounds good!

Based on this, baring any real injury, I don't see any reason you can't strengthen your knees becoming active and pain free. How did you injure your knees. Were you doing weighted squats? Were you doing partial squats, smith machine squats of wall squats? If you believe that there is a chance that you really are injured, you should see a doctor. If you have a tear or other injury, you want to get that checked out before undertaking a further exercise program. If you are fine, then there is no reason you can't strenghten your knees. Weak knees and joints can cause the pain you describe, but can be remedied quite easily by appropriate exercise. Just don't leap into exercise until you are sure you did not suffering from a torn ligament or something.

[ChrisNTX]

Originally Posted by Javabean

They ache when I'm hiking downhill and creak loudly when I go up stairs. Are there any exercises that can strengthen them so they don't wear out when I'm older?

Have you had any type of health assessment and fitness screen/evaluation? How long have you been hiking? Engaged in a current exercise program outside of hiking? It's more than just about strengthening the knees.

[ChrisNTX]

Originally Posted by Javabean

Hi there, I'm female, 40, good health (except thyroid seems a little sluggish), take no meds, no surgeries, moderately active walking and hiking. I might have injured them doing squats earlier this year - I thought I was doing them right but maybe not. Maybe something else was up too. They got worse after that though and haven't gotten better yet.

I haven't seen a doctor and don't have a regular one. What kind of doctor should I look for? The PT sounds good!

Have you been evaluated/screened by a fitness professional? Doing the squats actually could have exacerbated some underlying conditions that could have been picked up by a fitness professional. Since you're in pain, go to a healthcare professional and get it medically assessed.

[Javabean]

I've been hiking for decades without any problems and I'm active outdoors. I'm not experienced with weights though. I had been doing goblet squats for several weeks on a new program when my knees became inflamed so I stopped right away. Maybe my dumbbell was too heavy? After I first hurt them walking up or down an incline was painful but that only lasted a week or two. Then it settled into what it is now and that was over 3 months ago.

Is it possible to have a torn ligament and not have any particular sharp pain or other symptom? Could the initial inflammation have been a symptom of a tear or some other serious injury?

ChrisNTX, I haven't gone to a doc yet because I have crummy insurance and I was hoping they'd just get better, but it sounds like finding a suitable doctor had better be my next step before I start any exercises.

[ChrisNTX]

Originally Posted by Javabean

I've been hiking for decades without any problems and I'm active outdoors. I'm not experienced with weights though. I had been doing goblet squats for several weeks on a new program when my knees became inflamed so I stopped right away. Maybe my dumbbell was too heavy? After I first hurt them walking up or down an incline was painful but that only lasted a week or two. Then it settled into what it is now and that was over 3 months ago.

Is it possible to have a torn ligament and not have any particular sharp pain or other symptom? Could the initial inflammation have been a symptom of a tear or some other serious injury?

ChrisNTX, I haven't gone to a doc yet because I have crummy insurance and I was hoping they'd just get better, but it sounds like finding a suitable doctor had better be my next step before I start any exercises.

It's not necessarily that the dumbbell was too heavy, but you incorporated an exercise from a program that you have never done before and the squats pointed out your weakness or symptom. Now that the pain/injury has occured it's not surprised that other movements cause pain. This is the very exact reason why I'm a big proponent of some type of movement screen or evaluation.

You really do need to get your injury assessed by a medical professional. He/she will have to refer you to a physical therapist if it's needed. Maybe even a soft tissue worker might be able to help if you want a "hands on" approach. In the meantime, stop all unnecessary activity that causes pain. Good luck to you.

[BrianSCohen]

Originally Posted by Javabean

I've been hiking for decades without any problems and I'm active outdoors. I'm not experienced with weights though. I had been doing goblet squats for several weeks on a new program when my knees became inflamed so I stopped right away. Maybe my dumbbell was too heavy? After I first hurt them walking up or down an incline was painful but that only lasted a week or two. Then it settled into what it is now and that was over 3 months ago.

If you are not in a position to get medical or physio help, here is what I might suggest. You are fairly young and do not claim to have any adverse problems. You don't describe a sudden injury, rather an inflammation. I'd rather suspect you just stressed it. I'd like to suggest that you think about starting up with some mild exercise. Goblet squats are great, but don't do them weighted yet. Start doing some goblet squats, just with body weight, do a set of ten. Go slow and easy, no bouncing. Hold your hands straight out in front of you for balance. Make sure your knees go over your toes. You can have someone watch your knees. They should be tight, not bowing in or out. Then give yourself a day or two to recover. Then do two sets of ten, and another day or so of recovery. Work up to 5 sets of ten.

If you make it to this point, without any recurrence of pain, you should be able to put together a program to get yourself back on track. You just may need to make sure you are using proper form and not increasing the weights to fast.

[2big4mysize]

Before you strenghten any of your leg muscle groups get your knees checked out and be sure they are tracking when your bend them cause if the muscles in your legs are not strengthened in blance you can actually make it worse over developing one group.


My knees sound like yours and I can walk pain free over 7 MPH but jog 4 MPH and the hurt like heck and the down stroke on the tread climber, eliptical and bike cause them to hurt. treadmill power walking will help lots! you can use the incline and go up hill without the pain of coming back down neither

[VanjaJames]

I know that the "Leg Magic" is supposed to be exercise equipment for girls (I don't know if you are male/female actually) but that little piece of equipment works muscles I never knew I had.

Also, why not talk to your doc about diuretics? You might be suffering from a simple case of water retention - even if you are on a low carb diet, hi sodium foods can cause water retention and swelling of the joints.

When my dad was a practicing doc, he would prescribe diuretics (in combination with beta blockers and potassium supplements) and many patients said that their arthritis and joint pain disappeared.

Effective herbal diuretics are Uva Ursi and Dandelion root (which you can get in tea or pill form) but I would would also buy a potassium supplement to take with it.

[Javabean]

Wow, thanks for all of great advice and ideas in this thread! Would water retention cause the ache going downhill too?

Vanja, I plan on consulting a doctor, but since I must pay out-of-pocket for a visit I'm currently looking around to find a doctor who can give me the help I need (such as checking body alignment - 2big you sound just like me!) without any hassles or run-arounds.

In the meantime I'm trying some careful mild exercises as BrianSCohen suggested... the fact is that in the course of my work I sometimes have to go hike somewhere or carry heavy things anyway, and I think I could hurt myself worse if I stayed sedentary for a period of time and then suddenly had to go do something. So far everything is ok, no changes for the worse...

[VanjaJames]

Originally Posted by Javabean

Wow, thanks for all of great advice and ideas in this thread! Would water retention cause the ache going downhill too?

Water retention causes aches in your joints....in your back, sitting down, standing up, any which way, but water retention happens especially where there is inflammation around joints you have exercised.

If you wake up with puffy eyelids, or ever have your jewelry such as your rings get tight at the end of the day, or you eat plenty of salty foods, water retention is most likely the culprit.

Ask your doc about amiloride. Its a potassium sparing diuretic.

[2big4mysize]

glad you are getting moving.

I was a mazed at how fast i improved from week to week. My treadmill allows a .1 MPH change so I thought I would be slowly moving up by .1s but with the heart rate monitor and the blessings of my doc I started out slowly and for only short walks and when the heart rate moved out of the 60% max range for the beginings I slowed the treadmill down and recovered. After 2 weeks I was going a full 1 MPH faster and after just 3 weeks I did n't need to recover during the full 20 min walk each day. Then I lengthened them to 30 mins and when I could do a full 30 min no recovery needed during the walk I increased another 10 min. The treadmill at my gym has a built in fitness test where you can set the speed at which you want to take the test so when I could test out in the good range for the speed I was doing I know it was time to up the speed some more.

I started in June at under 2 MPH and 10 min and by OCT I was up to 45 min at 4 MPH.

That was when I learned about HIIT walking for fat burning weight loss and I tried it and was hooked. you do 1 min at whatever incline and/or speed it takes to get your heartbeat to your max and then 1 min ( or however long it takes to get back to it) at 60% of your max. then you crank it back up to max again and you alternate for 20 mins until you get in good condition again at those speeds and then if you are a walker and can't run you jack up the incline for the max rate part. I went from 4.5MPH flat to 7MPH on incline 9 in about a 6 months and upped the time to 60 mins. My recovery period went from about 3 mins to just 1 in between the max effort times.

And the better my treadmill walking got the easier moving around in real life got too.

[Demokat]

Hi 2big,

How many days a week do you do HIIT? I get so exhausted after my sessions that I usually only manage 3x/week.

Kathy

[2big4mysize]

I did HIIT 3 days a week and BFL weight training 3 days.
I always felt energized after I got done, rubber legged but energized

[Javabean]

Update - I restarted fish oil a week or two ago and the creaking is almost gone! I'm taking 4 caps - that's 1200 mg EPA and 800 mg DHA per day. I had stopped taking a lot of supps because I wasn't seeing any effect to be honest, but I think I'll keep this one. I can't believe the difference and the only change has been the fish oil. If this continues I don't see the need for x-rays although I'd still like to consult some kind of sports doctor/therapist to check posture and alignment, try to understand what happened to me...

HIIT walking sounds interesting. I'd like to stay away from anything high impact.

[BrianSCohen]

Originally Posted by Javabean

Update - I restarted fish oil a week or two ago and the creaking is almost gone! I'm taking 4 caps - that's 1200 mg EPA and 800 mg DHA per day. I had stopped taking a lot of supps because I wasn't seeing any effect to be honest, but I think I'll keep this one. I can't believe the difference and the only change has been the fish oil. If this continues I don't see the need for x-rays although I'd still like to consult some kind of sports doctor/therapist to check posture and alignment, try to understand what happened to me...

HIIT walking sounds interesting. I'd like to stay away from anything high impact.

Fish oil is a natural anti-inflammatory. I take 4-5 caps twice a day.

HIIT can be a great way get in shape mixing anaerobic and aerobic in a single efficient workout. But as you build up fitness, walking will not challenge you enough. You really need to alternate between high intensity and recovery intervals, where the high intensity interval is 80-90% of max and you will soon need to run. You can do HIIT with any number of exercise, and until you feel comfortable with the health of your knees, you might want to consider doing HIIT with an elliptical trainer.

[2big4mysize]

Originally Posted by BrianSCohen

Fish oil is a natural anti-inflammatory. I take 4-5 caps twice a day.

HIIT can be a great way get in shape mixing anaerobic and aerobic in a single efficient workout. But as you build up fitness, walking will not challenge you enough. You really need to alternate between high intensity and recovery intervals, where the high intensity interval is 80-90% of max and you will soon need to run. You can do HIIT with any number of exercise, and until you feel comfortable with the health of your knees, you might want to consider doing HIIT with an elliptical trainer.

I beg to differ with you on that. Using a treadmill you can increase not only the walking speed but the incline as well.
if you are a runner go do a walking warm up at 5 MPH and then increase the incline to 8 or 9 and do a min at the same speed and see where your heart rate goes! I have been doing walking HIIT since Summer of 03 and can still get to max heart rate doing the speed now at 7.5 MPH and the incline at full up and do the recovery heart rate at 5.5 MPH and incline flat. And yes I'm using a walking leg motion at that speed. If I changed to a running motion I would be in severe knee pain after about 5 min.


the eliptical is a painful machine for those with tracking issues in their knees which is why HIIT walking is a godsend.

[BrianSCohen]

Originally Posted by 2big4mysize

I beg to differ with you on that. Using a treadmill you can increase not only the walking speed but the incline as well.
if you are a runner go do a walking warm up at 5 MPH and then increase the incline to 8 or 9 and do a min at the same speed and see where your heart rate goes! I have been doing walking HIIT since Summer of 03 and can still get to max heart rate doing the speed now at 7.5 MPH and the incline at full up and do the recovery heart rate at 5.5 MPH and incline flat. And yes I'm using a walking leg motion at that speed. If I changed to a running motion I would be in severe knee pain after about 5 min.


the eliptical is a painful machine for those with tracking issues in their knees which is why HIIT walking is a godsend.

I am glad you are able to use walking. Myself, any speed over about 4.5 mph and I just convert over to jogging and then running. I can't really walk at 7.5 mph. I am glad it works out for you. And yes, I do agree with you that the use of an incline can really help increase the intensity of the max interval.

[2big4mysize]

pain helps keep that covertion away for me.

I wanted to run and started the couch to 5K plan but it made my knees hurt and when i complained to my doc he said let me get this straight you want to run slower then you can now walk but it hurts? Just keep walking and forget about running or we can do the knee replacements and then you can run. I saw his rational and continue to power walk!

[Denise85]

I'm 31 and in PT for chondromalasia. My knees started to really hurt a few weeks back and this was the second time I had this pain. I saw my regular doc, who sent me to an ortho. I have arthritis in both feet from exericisng too much (I had exercise bulima for many years and knew about the arthritis), and now I have chondromalagia. While the PT was testing me we found out that my IT band is also shortened in both legs, so that my knee caps pull to the outsides, my hamstrings and inner thighs are very week, and my calf muscles are way too tight. She's having me do a ton of strenghtening and stretching for my inner thighs and hamstrings. We're also doing some strenthening of the IT band and a lot of stretching it out. We're also working on my calves, and the front of my quads. Balance is also being worked in. I've only been in PT for a week, and I have at least 3 more weeks to go. I highly recommend seeing your doc and getting a script for PT if you can. If I left this untreated and kept working out the way I did I would eventualy need knee replacement surgery. If I had decided to just try strenthening the muscles around my knees on my own it wouldn't have worked. I had no idea about the IT band, the calves, hamstrings, and my knee caps pulling to the sides. Now I can properly fix the problem.

I wanted to add that I've been working out regularly for 11 years, and have always done weight training 3 times a week a long with cardio. It was a shock to me to hear that my hamstrings and inner thighs were so weak. Strenghtening the proper muscles, lenghtening the others, and getting my knee caps back where they belong should take away the pain, and keep it away.

[Susan81]

Make sure you are stretching your legs and exercising the knee joints and ankles prior to any workout, exercise, or hiking. You have to lubricate your joints by working them. So just by standing and then pretending that you are going to sit on a chair and squat and stand back up is one way. Also, bend your knees and rotate them together in a circle clockwise and then counterclockwise. Do the same thing with your ankles and wrists prior to exercise. These are simple warm ups. Raising your knee to your chin is also a plus. If you're able, bend your leg behind you so your foot reaches towards your butt and hold your ankle - your knee will be bent then and you'll be standing on one foot. Try all those. )