How To Instantly Fix Knee Pain When Going Up And Down Stairs

Are you dealing with a knee pain when you’re going up or downstairs? Well, in this video today, I’m going to show you how to instantly, massively reduce your knee pain. Possibly even get rid of it with just what I’m going to show you in this video today.

Now, disclaimer, there’s more to it than what I’m going to show you today to solving your knee problem for the long term. But if you’ve got stairs at home, or you encounter stairs every day, wherever you go, work life, things that you have to do, this technique will reduce your knee pain, pretty massively possibly even get rid of it completely.

My name is Dr. David Middaugh. And I’m a specialist physical therapist at El Paso Manual Physical Therapy. And this channel is dedicated to helping people on YouTube. get active, healthy and mobile. Again, while avoiding unnecessary surgery, injections, and medications, be sure to subscribe and turn on your notifications, so you don’t miss any valuable tips that we share every week.

So I’m going to show you on a staircase in just a moment how exactly to go up and down the stairs. But before we get there, I just want to give you two knowledge pieces so that you can have a better understanding of how the stair climbing works both going up and downstairs.

The two biggest important pieces that you need to know number one, the need to turn your foot all the way out and bring your knee out over your foot possibly even outside of your foot, depending on where your foot is. So every time you take a step up, make sure that you land with your foot out your toes had to be pointed outwards. And then when you step up with the other side also land outwards. And then your knees can be going straight, they have to be cut outwards as well.

So it’s going to feel awkward, like you’re moving your legs all the way out. But that’s what you need. When you do that, you will change the pressures that go through your knees, and it becomes a lot less painful. The second thing that you need to do is activate your glutes, so it gets a little tricky. I’ve talked about glutes a lot on this channel, it’s so critical for knee problems, especially but also hip and back problems.

And so I can’t drive the point home enough. But when you’re going to push through your leg to go up to the next step, the push needs to come from the bump muscle from those glutes. Of course, your foots going to be out your knees going to be out. But when you start to actually drive your body upwards to take the next step up, you have to think about clenching your butt muscles so that that’s the main muscle you’re using to push up.

If you’re not using the button muscle, then what you’re going to be using likely is going to be your quad muscles, the muscles that are on the front of your thigh. If you fire those quad muscles too much repeatedly going up and down the stairs, then you’re likely going to increase the pressures inside your knee joint.

Which causes the knee pain if you’ve already got an injury, meniscus patellofemoral Pain Syndrome, damaged cartilage, arthritis, any kind of those common knee problems, it’s going to increase the pressure on those injured parts of your knee and make it painful to go up and down the steps.

But if you turn your leg out, turn your foot out to your knee out and you fire with a bump muscle going up. Then you take pressure off the knee joint by firing the glutes which kind of shuts off the quads a bit, and makes it a lot more tolerable, possibly even pain for you to go up.

And when coming down the steps. It’s a little bit different. I’ll show you on the video here in a second. But the leg that you’re descending with the one that you’re going to put down you’re not too worried about it’s the leg that stays up.

When you’re coming down that leg that’s the steam behind is actually the leg that’s controlling the descents controlling your body sinking down to the next step. So that leg has to be prepositioned outwards, the toes have to be out and the knee has to be out over the foot. And then you have to think about using the glutes as you descend down.

So I’ll show you on the video here in just a moment. But just think about this before you actually go and do it. If you’ve got stairs at home and you want to go try this. Step, start with your feet out if you’re at the top of the steps you’re coming down, and then bring a leg down and pre-position it outwards so that you can land with your foot out. And then make sure you fire your glute on the way down and then you’re doing the same thing on the other side is you’re bringing your other leg down.

So you’re always thinking about using your glutes throughout the steps. So when you’re on the stairs, think about firing your butt muscle. If you’re going to go up the stairs, that leg needs to be up Turn your knee out. And then I have my hand my butt here so you can think about squeezing it. Then step outwards with the left leg.

Turn your knee out over the foot intention of the buck muscle as you come up to the next step and you can repeat on the right. Repeat on the left. Always land with your foot and knee out and think about squeezing your butt muscle.

In order to come down the stairs, preposition your feet outwards, turn your knees out as well and then when you descend, that back leg is going to be the one that you really have to focus on pushing outwards with the knee and fire those buttock muscles on the way down. land with your other foot out.

Turn your knee out, and then think about firing the buck muscle on that back leg as you come down. And just repeat, always turn those knees out the feet out and use those about muscles on the way down. So let’s see this in real time, if you’re going to go up the stairs, make sure that your knees are going out and not straight forward. And then when you decide to come down the stairs lead with those feet out, and the knees should be coming out.

And as you can see here in real time, it doesn’t look terribly awkward, but it might feel kind of awkward when you start out. So rewind that, take a look, listen closely played a few times. That’s the way that you should always be going up and down stairs, so that you take the pressures off your knees and make your glutes work the way that they’re supposed to. That’s how you should be climbing stairs the rest of your life.

That’s why you should have been climbing stairs before. And you know if you decide to repeat this and kind of make it exercise, just make sure that it is an aggravating your knee. If you’ve got a severe knee problem, you don’t want to go to stairs to do exercise you want. What I’m trying to do here is just if you’ve got to encounter stairs because you have them in your home or at work or someplace where you run into stairs consistently.

My goal is to help you make those stairs more tolerable. Now, if you’re recovering from any problem, we get a lot of comments from viewers I’ve been doing our exercises and they’re getting better if you’re kind of in that position. And you’re looking now to do stairs for exercise, it can be a good thing for you. Just make sure you do them just like this.

We’ve had people do the stair mill you know the thing that looks like a treadmill, but it’s stairs and you’re just climbing up stairs constantly. And that’s a great exercise if you’re using your glutes properly and turning your knees and your feet out.

But if you’re not used to doing that, then chances are you’re going to re aggravate your knees and possibly make that arthritis or patellofemoral Pain Syndrome, the cartilage and meniscus issue worse over time, because you’re probably using your quad muscles which increases that pressure in the knee joints.

So take home points, use those glutes make sure you turn your legs all the way out so that you take those pressures off the knee joints. Hey guys, leave us a comment. Let us know if this helped you out I want to hear if it completely got rid of your knee pain. That would be amazing.

We hear that from our patients here in the clinic all the time whenever we take them out to the stairwell and we have them practice exactly this what I showed you, they’re shocked to find out that they can dramatically reduce their knee pain even get rid of it completely in some cases.

And most importantly, if they’re considering selling their house, they’re relieved to know that they don’t have to sell it for that reason for other reasons, possibly, but at least their knees aren’t holding them back from enjoying their home.

If you’re looking for help with walking regarding your knee pain, because you’re running into knee pain during walking, go check out another video that we’ve got. I put the link in the description right here. It’s called does walking help knee pain, and it shows you exactly how to walk in such a way that reduces your knee pain.

This will help you be able to last longer in your feed be able to walk farther. And if you’re doing this for exercise, it can actually benefit your knees so that you can heal cartilage heal your meniscus and get back to enjoying the things that you love.

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