3 Best Exercises For Painful Bone On Bone Knee Arthritis

Hey, in this video today I’ll be covering the top three exercises to help heal bone on bone in the arthritis pain. Be sure to watch the end of the video because I’ll also be going over several tips that you don’t want to miss. If you’ve got bone on bone knee arthritis problems.

I’m Dr. David Middaugh and I’m a specialist physical therapist El Paso Manual Physical Therapy. And this channel is dedicated to helping people stay healthy, active and mobile, while avoiding unnecessary surgeries, injections and pain medications. Please consider subscribing so that you don’t miss out on any of the videos that we upload every week.

The first exercise I’m going to cover with you is tailgate swings. If you think of sitting in the back of a truck on the tailgate of a truck, or on the dock of your water somewhere like at a lake or the ocean, and your feet are just dangling or poolside or sitting on the edge of a pool or somewhere there’s water, and you just swinging your legs back and forth. That’s all this exercises.

And you do want to time yourself you want to go for at least three minutes, up to five minutes or more. And this exercise is incredibly important for somebody who’s got bone on bone, Knee Joint Pain, because what you’re doing in this exercise is you’re circulating the fluid inside the knee joint joints have fluid called synovial fluid. And this fluid is designed to nourish and heal the cartilage on the inside of the joint. In the case of your knee, you’ve also got the meniscus in there and other ligaments that do get nutrition from that fluid inside the knee joint.

So by moving your knees gently like this, you’re circulating that fluid, especially to the parts of the cartilage that don’t have a good blood supply. This is incredibly important for you to do. Now, I love this exercise because it’s not compressing your knee joint, you’re not putting any way through your legs. And it’s not super aggressive either. So for somebody with aggravated knees, irritated bone on bone joint cartilage, then it is going to be gentle, gentle for you. I love this exercise because you’re not putting weight to your feet. S

o it’s not that irritating for somebody that’s got very flared up knee cartilage very, very flared up bone on bone situation. This one does not increase the irritation, it’s very doable as long as you’re not being very aggressive. And you’re doing what with what’s within your tolerance, this should feel really good to do. And you won’t benefit from this. Unless you’re doing at least three or more minutes of this, we got to set a timer and go for a minimum of three minutes. And this does have to be done quite frequently throughout the day to get the full benefits of it.

Now the other exercises I’m going to cover you’ll also do frequently throughout the day, I’ll explain more about exactly what frequency is right for you. Based on the severity that you’re in, you might do this a few times a day. Or you might do this several times a day kind of often, in order to get the irritation for the bone-on-bone pain down towards manageable for you. Now as I’m finishing up this exercise, I’m going to start prepping for the next exercise.

A big root problem for bone-on-bone knee arthritis problems is a muscle imbalance. And it’s typically an over dominant quad muscle or muscles in the front of the thighs here that are too strong, and they’re causing excessive compression of the cartilage on itself. That’s why it’s wearing down and becoming a bone-on-bone knee joint situation.

In order to reverse that muscle imbalance, it will take you some time. And the exercises I’m covering here in this video aren’t going to be the only thing you need to do. But this is a great starting point to get the pain under control. So you can begin to heal your bone on bone a joint situation and potentially avoid having the surgery like an ear replacements, or avoid having to rely on payment occasions and at the very least be able to get up and around and do normal things that you like to do like stand as long as you want to walk.

But in order to do this, you’ve got to use the right muscles. If you’re if you have a bone on bone knee joint situation like you would on an x ray or an MRI, then chances are you’ve been using your quads way too much and you’ve got to flip that. That’s the imbalance that you’re in, you’ve got to start to use your glute muscles. So the way that I want you to do this is to lie flat on your stomach face down. And there’s an alternative way to do this face up. It’s just a little bit different but I’m going to show you the facedown version first.

You can do this on the floor on the bed wherever you like it’s okay if you have your elbows under yourself like this or if you’re all the way flat it doesn’t matter. What you’re going to do from here is squeeze your butt muscles for 20 seconds. I’m going to do five rounds of this. So it looks just like this. You’re just tightening up those butt muscles. Avoid lifting your legs, you’re not trying to pick up your legs like this or your upper body.

You don’t want to fire your back muscles over here and you don’t want to fire your hamstring muscles in the back of your thigh. You want to focus on the buttock muscles, the glute muscles right here. Hold them tight for 20 seconds. Think tight. You got to think about squeezing them as hard as possible. And after about 20 seconds you can let go and just relax everything for a moment.

And whenever you’re ready to do to get down before you do it again, if you started to get a cramping or in your hamstrings in the back of the thigh, or in your back muscles, or any sort of pain back here, lighten how hard you’re squeezing those glutes only go as intensely as you can without getting any sort of cramps.

So, just to do that, again, I’m going to do all five rounds, you’re going to squeeze those butt muscles and hold it for 20 seconds. And what you’re thinking about as you’re doing this, besides squeezing them really hard, is trying to isolate, you should begin to feel the glute muscles working, and not much in the hamstrings, and not much in the back. And that’s why I’m telling you to lie face down like this so that you’re not having to use your back muscles, or your leg muscles.

If you’re starting to bend your knees like this, then you’re using your hamstrings. And it’s not going to allow you to focus on using the glutes. After about 20 seconds, relax those muscles. And really tune in, then close your eyes and think about your glute muscles tightening, squeezing as hard as you can.

The only other muscle that I’m okay with you firing in addition to the glutes is the abs. If you feel like your abs want to tighten up on this exercise, go for it, that’s okay, that’s actually a good thing. But do not let your hamstring start to work a lot or your back muscles work a lot. Try to focus on just the glute muscles tightening up after about 20 seconds and make sure that’s relaxed. You can check how hard it is.

If it’s relaxed, and you put your head back through by low when you tighten, just to make sure that you’re squeezing the right muscle, you’re not squeezing too low down here. If you even just play with it, like right here, I’m going to laugh somebody in my hamstrings. And I can tighten up effectively up here. And one other important thing that I want to say on this exercise that you need to grasp.

And just understand, if you’re going to solve this to bone-on-bone knee joint situation is if you’re having trouble firing your glute muscles, you can’t even get it to fire right, and your hamstrings keep working or your back muscles keep working. You need to stay on this exercise for a while, it is very, very important that you figure out how to make your muscles work.

Because then if you don’t, if you don’t figure out how your muscles work on their own without firing a bunch of other muscles, you’re going to be in bad shape moving forward from this exercise, you’re going to be firing other muscles on any other exercise. And it’s going to feed into the muscle imbalance that you probably already have. So that’s why some people have so much trouble fixing this problem because they go do other exercises that are supposed to help their bone on bone knee joint situation, but it ends up wearing them up because he can’t fire their glute muscles to begin with.

So doing a simple exercise like this to master getting those glutes turned on and working on command whenever you decide to do them. That’s critically important to then get stronger your glute muscles. So let’s read the other variation lying face up. You just lie flat, legs relaxed. And then same thing you’re thinking about tighten those butt muscles from right here. Now there isn’t a right or wrong as far as face down or face up.

What you should do at home is figure out which version makes your glutes work the best. And if you can’t decide one or the other, just pick one and go with it. At the end of the day, you need to have great conscious command of your glute muscles. And don’t fire any other muscles except the abs. It’s okay if you fire the ABS here, but you don’t want to fire the quads, or the hamstrings. No thigh muscles should be working. When you’re tightening up the glutes like this, hold for 20 seconds and do five rounds like that.

Now the third exercise you’re going to do is a bridge, I’m going to show you some variations just like I did with this glute hold exercise that I showed you a second ago. So bridge exercises like this, your knees are going to be bent, bend them uncomfortable amounts. Ideally, the more the closer you can get your feet are the more he can bend your knees, the better because you’ll shut off the hamstrings here.

But if you just can’t bend your knees very good because of your bone on bone, the situation and just do what you can get in this best position as you can, well will also help is to widen your feet to move them apart and angle them out a little bit, just like I’ve done right here.

Then to do this bridge properly, you’re going to think about tightening up your butt muscles just like you worked on just a second ago without tightening up the back of the thighs. Hold the butt muscles tight. And then you’re going to start to lift your hips up to where you feel the beginning of a stretch on the front of the thighs and that’s it. You’re going to hold it right there for 10 seconds.

I was thinking about fire my glutes as hard as they can they’re. So you can do this 10 times 10 repetitions. So but squeeze first before you even lift you might start lifting and that motion but you’re thinking about squeezing the butt, then lift a bit, just to where you begin to get a baby stretch on the front of the thighs, you want to avoid getting a big thigh stretch here, because then you might contract, you might tighten up the muscle on the front of the thigh. And that’s going to work against you.

So don’t feel a big stretch on the front. In fact, if you can lift up and tighten up the glutes without much of a stretch, great. Now if you’re in a situation where your glutes are not working very well, you might not do this exercise, or you might not even lift, you might do this modified to where you just tighten up from right here. And you’re just working on tightening up the act but the glutes without actually lifting up for the exercise. So don’t do this part.

If you feel like your quads are working, or the hamstrings are working on the back of your thighs, it should feel like just your glutes are getting a good workout on this exercise. So you’re going to squeeze, lift, hold for 10 seconds, as long as you have good glue control. And if you push your knees wider here, you might fire glutes even more, which is perfect. Hold it for 10 seconds there. And after you’ve done 10 reps, you’ve done a round of exercise for your bone-on-bone knee joint situation.

If you go at full speed, you do the tailgate swings for about three minutes, then you lie down and you do the glute sets of the glute bridges, I’m sorry that the glue contractions for 20 seconds five times, there’ll be another few minutes, maybe two or three minutes. And then if you do the bridge exercise as well for another few minutes. This shouldn’t take you more than about six- or seven-minutes total.

To do this definitely not more than 10 minutes to do the whole thing if you’re going on the slower side. If you’re in a bone on bone knee joint situation, and you’ve been told that you might need knee replacement surgery someday or some sort of surgery, it is totally worth it. To do these exercises as much as you can what I would recommend if you were coming into my office to see me as my clients, I would be telling you to look at doing this hourly, you can get 10 rounds in a day, that would be fantastic.

What you need to end up doing for yourself if you’re watching me on YouTube right now is figuring out how much you can do on your own at home. It may not be that you do all three exercises every single time that would be ideal, of course. But if you can figure out ways to do different bits of these exercises throughout the day, what you should see is over the course of a week, two weeks, three weeks, slight improvements in your knee joint situation and your bone-on-bone arthritis situation it should feel a little less painful, a little easier to move around and walk less stiffness in the mornings. And less stiffness.

When you get up after you’ve been sitting for a while, I’m going to cover some bonus tips with you, you need to be thinking about this stuff as well. If you’ve got a bone-on-bone knee joint situation, the first tip is you need to do a little bit of gentle stretching. If you’ve lost motion, if you feel like you can’t bend your knees all the way like one stay like this and the other one bends further than that knee has lost some motion, it will benefit you to just gently stretch the knee joint just like this.

To make sure that you get full range of motion, as long as you can get it gently without aggressively stretching, continue to stretch. If you feel like your knee just doesn’t improve with a little bit of light stretching, it’s probably not going to improve much. No big deal, you can still reduce the pain. And what you want to avoid is aggressive stretching because if you’ve got a bone-on-bone knee joint situation, the knee joint moving on itself got my knee here.

When you model, the knee moving on itself, the surfaces are going to be bumpy and not smooth like this should be some of the cartilage has worn down. So you just may not be able to bend the full amount no matter what you do unless you have a surgery, of course. But you may not need the surgery if you’re if your pain levels can go down and you can get back to doing what you what you want to do despite you lacking a little bit of motion. So just because you don’t have full range of motion does not mean that you have to have surgery.

If you can still be functional, do what you want to do, and be happy with that. Even though you’re missing a little bit of motion, then you’re fine, you should be able to go on without having a surgery. The second tip is you need to move your kneecap, the kneecap is this little bone right here that patella, it’s got cartilage in the back of it that rubs on the cartilage it’s on the end of the thigh bone. And when you move that kneecap should move up and down.

But sometimes it does get stuck especially if you have that muscle imbalance that I was talking about where your quads are really tight. I’ve got a video linked in the description that goes over how to do that. The gist of it really really really quick.

You want to check out the video to get all the details. You’re going to be grabbing your kneecap and moving it in every direction that it can go in to be gentle with this it should not hurt you it should feel better after you’ve done it. Go check out that video to learn exactly how to move your kneecap. The third bonus tip here is drink plenty of water.

Now this may sound like a cliche piece of advice from a healthcare professional for somebody who’s got a bone-on-bone situation arthritis, but it is true if You know, if you’re not drinking water, you’re not helping yourself, your cartilage, the stuff that’s worn down in the end of your bone is 60 to 70% water. And if you’re not drinking 100 ounces or more a day of water, then you can look up the exact recommendations.

Generally, depending on your body weight, it should be at about 100 ounces, give or take or two liters, give or take, or more of water. And you’ll be hydrating your cartilage and getting enough fluid inside the knee joint so that you can get the nourishment that your cartilage needs to heal and flare down. It is just such a good thing to do.

Overall, all the processes that happen in your body, if you think of any cells that you’ve seen any images of bone cells, or, you know, the way the biology works, it all happens in water molecules moving water and nutrients moving water. And if you’re dehydrated, you have just a little less water throughout the all the cells of your body and processes just don’t happen as good as they could.

So if you just upped your water intake and stay hydrated, you’ll help your cartilage out quite a bit. I get people all the time that say I go to the bathroom more often. That’s a consequence of having great healthy kind of go to the bathroom. If you have trouble going to the bathroom, then that’s a whole other situation that you need to get looked at so that you can heal your cartilage and be drinking enough water to do so. So make sure that you’re taking care of your health so that you can drink plenty of water and drink plenty of water so you can take care of your health. It’s a self-feeding cycle.

The fourth piece of advice that I have for you is learn how to walk properly using your glute muscles and how to go up and down stairs properly using your glute muscles as well. A lot of people don’t know that there’s a specific way to use your glute muscles so that you can offload your knee joint so you can take pressure off your knee joints and allow that cartilage to heal, especially if you’ve got stairs at home.

Or if you have to walk a lot for whatever reason or if you just enjoy walking for exercise or you have a pet that you got to go walk, it’s critical time for you to be using your muscles properly to help your bone-on-bone knee joint situation feel. If you don’t know how to do this, we’ve got videos linked in the description below the tree exactly how to do it.

And just like I mentioned this for as far as the exercises, glute control is critical for this. So go check out those videos and if you don’t know how to fire glutes very well refer back to this video. You want to save this one bookmark it and it’s your safe playlist so that you can rewatch it and figure out how to get those glutes firing. If you’ve got a question, drop a comment below.

We’ll get to it as fast as we can. And consider subscribing to our channel we make videos to help people stay healthy, active and mobile while avoiding unnecessary surgery injections and pain medications. We’ll catch you in the next video guys. Bye