Important Exercise Tips You Must Know When Repairing A Knee Cartilage Problem

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Hey El Paso! Welcome to the Stay Healthy El Paso Podcast. I'm your host Dr. David Middaugh specialist physical therapist from El Paso Manual Physical Therapy. And I'll be talking to you today about the three most important exercise tips when repairing knee cartilage problems. Knee cartilage problems often cause achiness, pain, crunching sensations, grinding sensations, those types of knee cartilage problems are completely fixable.

Now I'm not saying that the crunchy or grindy can go away, but it can reduce in pain and discomfort. You can reduce any swelling that you've got going on. And most importantly, it is possible to get back to exercising, to going up and down steps, and doing the things that you love to do without worrying that you're going to end up having some surgery later on.

Unfortunately, a lot of people in the medical field don't believe that it's even possible to fix a knee cartilage problem. And often when patients go to see them, they resort to fixing this type of knee cartilage problem with medications, injections and surgery.

In fact, surgeons that do procedures that are designed to clean up knee cartilage problems often tell their patients that they'll need a knee replacement at some point soon, within a few years or a decade or so. But they don't offer a way to naturally help the knee cartilage problem because that's just not what they went to school for. That's not what they trained for. So they're just usually not even aware of it.

And in fact, they may even see people that attempted to fix their knee problem on their own naturally and didn't successfully do it. And so they're back in the clinic and it just validates their perception of the fact of it validates their perception about that it's not possible to heal a knee cartilage problem naturally, that is just going to get worse over time no matter what. But the truth is that it is possible to repair knee cartilage using exercises.

We do it here in the clinic all the time. What's important to notice is that there is no one exercise that works for everybody consistently every time. It's a series of exercises all bundled together in a process. It has to happen gradually over time and that process needs to be adapted to your specific situation. Depending on how severe your knee cartilage problem is, and how weak other muscles are and how you move, what goals you want to get back to. Thereā€™re all these factors that have to be accounted for in properly recovering a knee cartilage problem that you might be dealing with. So I'm going to cover with you today the three most important exercise tips when repairing cartilage.

 

So here are the three most important tips for exercise when repairing knee cartilage problems.

Number One, Take Pressure Off.

Specifically take pressure off the kneecap. Knee cartilage problems often happen when the kneecap is pressing way too hard against the end of the thigh bone where the joint is, where the surfaces of the bones meet. Oftentimes, itā€™s the quad muscles, the quadricep muscles, the muscles in the front of the thigh that are too stiff, too tight, too strong, and yank that kneecap up against the end of the thigh bone way too hard.

Over time, that begins to degenerate the cartilage on the back of the kneecap or on the front of the thigh bone, and cause there to be too much pressure, too much bad forces. And thatā€™s how the knee cartilage problem develops.

If you feel like thatā€™s your situation, then what you need to do is just lay off, do less walking, do lower intensity activities. A lot of people that we talked to that have knee problems, they try walking for exercises, to fix their knee problem, stop doing that. You need to do things that are not aggravating to your knees so that you can take off the pressures from your knee.

In fact, if youā€™ve been actively exercising your quadricep muscles, those thigh muscles in the front of your thigh, stop doing that because itā€™s likely putting too much pressure on the kneecap. So take pressure off your kneecaps.

Number Two, Lots Of Light Reps.

What I mean by that is, cartilage is stimulated to heal by taking on light pressures. Now think about this, if your skin can take pressure. For instance, if you think about calluses, if you go lift weights or you do some housework or yard work, and you are using a broom or some tool with handles on it, you start to get callus on your hands.

Thatā€™s your skinā€™s response to doing an activity that puts a lot of pressure on the skin. And of course, if you do it in the right way, your skin gets a nice callus that allows you to be able to do that job over and over again, without messing up your skin. Well cartilage has to do the same thing.

So, you need to put the appropriate amount of force on the cartilage so that it thickens and gets denser so that it can take on the forces that you need to put it away for your everyday normal activities. But if your cartilage is very irritated right now, itā€™s just like if you have irritated skin, you just canā€™t put a lot of pressure on it. In fact, you have to put way lighter than normal pressures on it to accommodate it.

If you have a lot of pressure on your kneecap right now, and you want to put some light reps through it, you got to do super-duper light stuff, like biking with zero resistance, like a stationary bike that might be an option. Walking is probably going to be too much. Tailgate swinging is an exercise that Iā€™ve talked about in other videos, you canĀ go check out our playlist of videos on our YouTube channelĀ if you want and find what I mean by tailgate swings, and shameless plug.

Weā€™ve got a program called theĀ 28 Day Knee Health And Wellness Boost ProgramĀ where I talk all about tailgate swings, and other exercises that help to heal knee cartilage problems.

But back to what I was saying. It depends on the intensity or the irritation level of the cartilage. So if your cartilage is actually not that irritated, then maybe walking can be a high repetition, low intensity or light exercise that you can do. Now weā€™re looking at doing reps in the hundreds at this point, so if you are able to do light reps, you got to do hundreds of reps. Iā€™d say 2, 3, 4 hundred or more reps, which you might not be counting the reps, you might be more so count the time.

That might mean walking for 20 minutes or cycling for 20 minutes or tailgates waiting for 20 minutes or more. And you can spread this out throughout the day, if itā€™s a lot to do all at once. But it should not hurt you to do this activity, it should just kind of warm up your knees. It shouldnā€™t make it painful at all. And if you do that, if you give your knee cartilage light reps over time, you should put it in a position where itā€™s going to stimulate healing. And it can make the cartilage more dense so that you can take on more aggressive activities and itā€™s a good thing for your knees. Not a harmful thing.

Number Three Get Strong.

If youā€™ve been able to take the rotation off, if youā€™ve been able to control the flare ups or the inflammation that you have initially with a severe cartilage problem in the knee, and then youā€™ve done light reps on your knee exercise that just puts a light pressure through the knee joints. And if that worked out for you, then the next step is to progress your strength in muscles that influence good movement in the knee joint.

Specifically, youā€™re going to want to work out your glute muscles way more than your quads in just about 99% of cases, so that you donā€™t put more pressure through your kneecaps. But you do need to get strong. Just think about being able to get up and down from chairs easily. If youā€™re the type that needs a few chances to swing your body weight back and forward and then get up out of the chair. Thatā€™s not good. You need to be able to get up right out of the chair. And chances are youā€™re missing strength to do that.

If you canā€™t tolerate standing more than 10 or 15 minutes, just because you get tired. Thatā€™s a sign that youā€™re probably pretty weak as well. Maybe youā€™re more fit than what Iā€™m talking about and youā€™re able to do all that stuff but havenā€™t worked out in a while. And you probably need to strengthen more from where youā€™re at so that this knee problem isnā€™t going to come back. So get strong in the right muscles to ensure that your knee cartilage is healthy.

The reason for this is because as you get stronger and you put good forces through your knee cartilage, it thickens. It densifies and allows your knee cartilage to absorb more aggressive forces without becoming irritated. Essentially, you build a margin for being able to tolerate bad forces, so you protect it. This protection is what allows you to avoid having a surgery later on, or avoid taking medications, or injections because of a knee problem.

Now that being said, you might still have sounds coming from your knees whenever you go to go upstairs or downstairs or squat down and get something from the ground. Thatā€™s okay. As long as itā€™s not painful, then youā€™re okay.

Well, thanks for listening to this podcast, I hope that you learned a lot. If you're at all interested in resolving your knee cartilage problem, then I encourage you to check out the notes about how to get to the 28 Day Knee Health And Wellness Boost Program. That program is packed with great information about how to exercise, how to rest, what not to do, what to do, and it's a guided procedural type program where you can know exactly what to do there. I walk you through step by step how to do it. And you can access this 24/7. So if you're a late night person, early morning person, or you just kind of like to fit it in whatever parts of your day, it's completely on demand, you can you can decide when you want to start it. And then you can repeat it. If you want to go through it a few times, I encourage you to do that because you'll get more benefit for doing it more times if your knee problem is really severe.

Another option is, if you want us to help you directly if you're in the El Paso area, then call our clinic at 915-503-1314. And let us know that you heard about us on the podcast and that you want to get in touch about how we might be able to help you out in person with solving your knee cartilage problem. We're happy to do that. Guys, I hope that you have a wonderful day and stay healthy guys. See you soon. Bye.

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