Knee exercise is the best way to protect your knees from any injury or knee pain since it can strengthen the muscles that support the knees. Tired or weak muscles cannot support the knee joint or protect it from any injury that may occur. Any extra stress that is put to the knee can lead to knee injury. Strengthening exercise can do the job in tightening the muscles and should always be combined with stretching exercise.
Flexible muscles cannot get easily injured than tight muscles so that stretching the muscles that support the knee can also prevent any knee injury. Too much tightness of the muscles in the knee can also put the knee out of alignment. But take caution too when doing stretching exercise, make sure to go slow so as not to overstretch. You do not want to overstretch the muscle for this can tear the muscles.
To avoid overuse injuries, go slow with your knee exercise. Just try to increase the duration of your knee exercise as you perform it and you will surely see results. Strength should be built up slowly. When your ligaments, tendons and muscles are slightly stressed beyond their limits, tears happen. This is nothing to be alarm of and is actually normal and as these tears heals your muscles become stronger, firm and bigger. But the important thing to achieve is that this tear should be given time to heal if not severe conditions can develop.
In order to let the tear heal, you have to at least perform knee exercise every other day to give the muscles time to heal. You can do strengthening knee exercise three or four times week although stretching exercises can be done more often. The goal of such exercise is to prevent knee pain to any knee injury. Pain is our body’s way of telling you that something is wrong and you are overdoing things and hurting yourself thus you should not ignore pain when you experience one.
After exercising it is normal to feel mild stiffness that can last for a day but if you cannot move for a couple of days, this only mean that you have overdone it. The truth is, it is hard to know when to stop when doing knee exercise because most of the time the pain does not set until a day or two later. But when it happens at least now you know your body’s limitation.
What to do when you have overdone your knee exercise? For inflamed tendons or muscles, rest is the most important thing. Wrap an ice in a cloth and apply it to your knee to lessen inflammation as well as the pain and speed up healing. Important thing is knee pain should be relieved before you resume your knee exercise program. But you can also lightly exercise the sore muscles for this can aid to decrease muscle soreness.
There are several muscle groups that support the knees but the two major muscle groups that control knee stability and movement are the hamstrings and the quadriceps. The hamstrings are muscles that consist the back of the thigh and are attach to the back of the shinbone which is just below the knee. Hamstring muscles are used to bend the knee and are also required when you push on something.
The quadriceps on the other hand is a muscle that runs in the front of the thigh and attach to the shinbone just below the knee. This muscle controls the movement of the knee cap and the straightening of the knees. This muscle is important for walking uphill or walking upstairs, for standing up and even running. This is primarily use to extend the leg.
Other muscles that affects knee stability in lesser degree than the two major muscles includes the hip abductors found in the inner thigh and outer thigh and calf muscles. It is important to perform strengthening exercise to all the muscles that brings knee stability or else it can create muscle imbalance. A muscle imbalance can be readily determine by a physical therapist and they can make a personalized exercise program to correct the matter.
Thus strengthening as well as stretching knee exercise is the best for pain relief. Some samples of stretching knee exercise are chair knee extension, heel slide knee extension, knee flexion and hamstring stretch. Strength training exercise includes wall slide, bent-leg raises, straight-leg raises, abductor raise, hamstring curl, step-ups, and stationary bike.
Depending on how active you are, you can start with three stretching and strengthening exercise, three to four times a week. You can do the stretching exercise daily if possible so as to avoid any painful joints or stiffness. You can even do these stretches several times a day if needed.
But always remember to consult your doctor before you start any exercise program. Remember to stop your exercise if at one point you experience pain. Exercises are designed to help not to hurt so there must be something wrong with your body if you experience pain. Soreness after exercise is normal. You can cold compress to your knee for ten to twenty minutes. If ice is not enough then try to elevate your leg in a chair.