3 Reasons Why Walking Backwards Is Bad For Bone On Bone Knee Arthritis

In this video, I’m going to tell you three reasons why walking backwards is bad for bone on bone knee arthritis. My name is Dr. David Middaugh. And I’m a specialist physical therapist at El Paso Manual Physical Therapy. This channel is dedicated to helping people stay healthy, active and mobile. While avoiding unnecessary surgery, injections and pain medications. Please consider subscribing to our channel so that you don’t miss out on any of the helpful videos we post every week.

So let’s cut to the chase is walking backwards helpful for your knee arthritis situation? The short answer is no. Now there’s one small situation where I would think that it could be helpful, it’s kind of a stretch. But let me get to that at the end of the video. Let me give you some reasons, though three reasons specifically, why you should not be walking backwards for exercise even if your doctor recommends it if a trainer recommends it. And these are sound mechanical reasons why it’s going to actually not be helpful for you.

Reason number one, it feeds into the problem, the main problem that people get knee arthritis, because there’s too much pressure going through a knee joint, let me show you on the skeleton. Here’s the knee joints. And you’re talking about arthritis on the surfaces of the thigh bone right here, you can have damage to the cartilage on the top of the shin bone here, and damage to the cartilage on the back of the kneecap here. As well as changes to the surfaces of the kneecap when you have a quad muscles, the muscles that are on the front of the thigh that are too dominant and too strong.

And when you walk backwards, you tend to use mostly the quad muscles, which actually makes the quad muscles even stronger, those quad muscles attached to the kneecap. And they shove the kneecap up harder against the thigh bone. And then there’s a ligament here that connects from the end of the kneecap to the shin bone, and that pulls the shin bone up into the end of the thigh bone more increasing the pressure.

This is often why the a bone on bone appearance is visible in an x ray, it may not always be that the cartilage has been crushed, and that you don’t have any more cartilage that it’s worn down, it may just be that the joint is pressurized. And if you depressurize it, you may create some space inside your joint. And that may allow you to feel better.

But if you go walk backwards and you’re using your quads primarily to do so you’re going to actually be feeding into that same root problem of having your quads increase the pressure inside your knee joint. So you don’t want to do it for that reason.

The second reason you should not walk backwards is because it’s not practical, meaning you don’t really need to walk backwards very much in your normal life. There’s rare circumstances that you may take a few steps backwards, but walking backwards for a distance or for time is just not a practical thing. And so spending time training on doing it.

And figuring out how to do a better is just not a good use of your time, there’s way better things that you can be doing to improve your knee arthritis, we often get patients here in the clinic that spend time on a treadmill walking backwards, or they’ll even go to the park or walk around the block backwards.

And it is the funniest, most awkward thing you’ll ever see having somebody do laps around the park walking backwards, I am seriously concerned as a physical therapist, I have to keep an eye on them. I just feel obligated to do so. Because if they fall and get hurt I am I need to be somebody who responds right away.

Which leads me to Reason number three, it’s dangerous. I mean, if you’re outside, whether you’re outside doing this, or in your house, or on a treadmill, the increase of you tripping and falling is so much higher. I don’t have any research to prove this. I don’t know that it’s been even studied. But you don’t have eyeballs in the back of your head except for my mom she does. But normally, everyone else does not have eyeballs in the back of their head.

So you can’t see where you’re going. And your legs are just not designed to go in that direction for a sustained period of time. So it’s dangerous. You’re just setting yourself up to fall and create some other injury that could likely even exacerbate your bone-on-bone knee arthritis. Now, let’s answer the question of when could it be helpful because I said at the beginning of this video, that there’s a small situation where it might be beneficial. And that’s in the short term.

Yes, there are patients that will walk backwards for a few minutes on the treadmill and tell us that their knee actually feels better. But that’s a short-term relief there. Like I said at the beginning. The reason number one is you’re actually feeding into the problem for the long term. The reason why people sometimes feel better is because they they’re trying something new, it’s a new input to the body.

It gives a different sensation and for a moment for maybe hours, or even a day or two you might actually have an improvement in your sensation in your knee. But as long as you’re strengthening your quadricep muscles on the front of your thigh in the long term as your muscles get stronger and they develop more on the front of your thigh it’s going to feed in to increase pressure at the knee joints, which is going to feed into the arthritis, the bone-on-bone situation in your knee joints.

The only way that I can see it possibly being a good thing is if you can train yourself to primarily use your glutes when you’re walking backwards, which is a bit of a tough task. And if you can’t do it successfully, I would encourage you to just practice walking forward, using your glutes properly, which I’ve linked a video in the description below about how to walk using your glutes properly because most people aren’t even using their glutes there.

The fact of the matter is, glute work is really the fix for knee arthritis, the stronger you can get your glutes and the more you can use them practically during walking and everyday activities. That’s what sets you up for that long term relief of knee arthritis so that you might avoid surgery, avoid having to rely on pain medications and avoid having to get injections in your knee for pain relief. So I hope this video was helpful for you.

If you’re considering trying walking backwards, I highly advise you not to do it. And I encourage you to go figure out how to walk forwards using your glutes rather than your quads and figure out other ways to use your glutes to strengthen them and to use them in everyday activities. Check out the videos in the playlist below that I’ve linked below for knee arthritis. They have a lot of exercises, stretches, advice and tips on what to do to begin to help your knee arthritis problem at home. Thanks for watching friends and I’ll see in the next video. Bye