Many people suffer from troublesome knees and this can be for a variety of different reasons.
Ignoring a niggle or simply not balancing out your approach to your training with care and diligence to the comfort of your knees can lead to unnecessary discomfort and/or issues and needing to look for alternative exercises.
Working safely on strengthening your knees can make a significant improvement on how much of an issue this may present and complimenting the strength aspect with some detailed stretching can offer a much happier joints!
Here are 5 moves to work the knees gently and ease them into more range:
Seated knee raises with extension
These are great for softly engaging the quadriceps and encouraging the knee to bend under slight tension.
Being seated keeps you sturdy and you can focus on keeping your leg straight throughout the movement.
Do these with control and try not to swing you legs.
Hamstring curls
Leg curls are great for your leg strength and help to stabilise the knee joint.
This can prevent injury and improve the condition of your knees.
The resistance work to this area of the leg is a good way to balance out stretching this muscle group to increase flexibility and keeps things work systematically.
Calf stretch
Our calves get very tight through day to day activity, then add this to your workouts and you have some serious shortening of the muscles in the lower leg and behind the knee.
Loosening off the calves can hone in on the complexity of the knee structure and give it some room to breathe.
ITB mobility
When the muscles in the legs get tight, everything is shortened and this can place unnecessary tension on the tendons.
By applying some light pressure with self massage ( foam rolling ), this can release some of the tension, ease pain and prevent further discomfort.
Many people don’t realise that this area along the outside of the body can be responsible for much distress with the knee and it’s fairly simple to work on and effective with consistency.
If you don’t have a roller, stretching the ITB ( iliotibial band ) can be helpful too.
Wall sits
This is a nice simple exercise to gradually build up strength in the legs and really helpful for supporting the knee joint.
Aim to hold for as long as you can reasonably comfortably.
Over time your hold time will get longer and longer and your legs will get stronger!
