Knee Arthritis: 5 Stretches You Can Do in 5 Minutes for Relief

In this video, I’m going to show you a quick five-minute stretch routine that actually relieves severe knee arthritis stiffness. After I’d cover these stretches, I’m going to give you three reasons that your knee is stiffening up, and advice on how to deal with that so that you can get relief for the long term.

My name is Dr. David Middaugh, I’m a specialist physical therapist at El Paso manual physical therapy. And this channel is dedicated to helping people stay healthy, active, and mobile. While avoiding unnecessary surgery injections and pain medications. Please consider subscribing to this channel so that you don’t miss out on any of the videos that we upload every week. Alright, let’s get into the stretches, I’m going to cover four stretches with you. And each one has little tweaks to it that are kind of unusual for stretches.

But they are designed to get the full motion out of each direction that we’re going to stretch your knee in. And none of these should hurt by the way, you should not be hurting yourself with any of these stretches, they should feel actually good to do you should get it finished the stretch routine and feel less stiff, you should feel like you can move a little bit better, maybe walk a little bit better. And it should last for a decent amount of time. And you can always come back to these stretches and do them again as needed throughout the day, since they’re not going to be aggravating you, they shouldn’t be aggravating you, you should be able to do them as much as you please.

The first stretch is a need bending stretch, we call it knee flexion in the health world, but this is what it looks like you’re just going to put your leg up somewhere, it could be up on the on the bed, if you’re on the bed, if you have a chair you can put it on to it doesn’t matter if your foots a little bit lower as it is in my case here. Or if it’s as at the same height as the rest of your body. All you’re going to do though is get comfortable, your knees already bending and don’t take it into a stretch yet, because what you need to do is turn your foot inwards, this is a little tweak that I’m talking about.

So, when you turn your foot inwards, it adds a little twist to your knee joint, the knee has ability to twist a little bit, which we’ll talk about more in just a second. But when you bend your knee inwards like that, or I’m sorry, when you twist your knee inwards, like that, and then you start to bend it holding your foot inwards, and just get to the edge of a stretch hole right there, we’re going to go for 30 seconds, this inward twist takes advantage of the shape of the knee joint on the inside, and allows you to maximize how much motion you’re getting out of this bending stretch.

It improves congruency, which is how the joint fits together with the cartilage in the bones. And so, you’re setting up your knee to move exactly the way that is designed. Hold it there for 30 seconds, turn your foot in. And if you ever need to come out, that’s totally fine. You can do this multiple more than 30 seconds, we’re going to do two rounds, we’re going to do two rounds of 30 seconds. So once you’ve finished one round, go out for just a moment, then come back in, turn your toes all the way in your ankle all the way in, and then bring your knee in and I have my hands here just to kind of assist.

I’m not pulling in really hard. And the stretch intensity is not bad at all. I’m not wincing, I don’t have any knee arthritis, thankfully, but you should not stretch so hard that you’re wincing grimacing or like you’re about to cry. In fact, on a scale of zero to 10. Two, meaning like the most intense stretch ever, it’s really hurting you, you should be at a one or a two, very mild stretch, it should not be aggressive at all.

And the reason for this is if you start stretching harder and harder, you’re going to compress the joint more, you’re going to cause the muscle to contract more, you’re going to do things that are going to add to the compression and stiffness of your knee joint. So, if you stay alive, you’re going to be safe, you’ll increase your flexibility more gradually and keep it for longer. So just 30 seconds with your foot all the way in like that is great.

Two rounds of 30 seconds are all you really need to get going. If you want to do more than that, it’s definitely helpful. I would recommend though waiting for a period of time like 30 minutes to 60 minutes or longer. To do nice straightening, you’re going to actually go out the opposite direction, the knees designed to turn inwards when it bends and then rotate outwards when you straighten out. So again, you can do this up on the bed, on a couch, on a chair wherever you want.

Just make sure that when when you’re stretching out your leg get to a comfortable position. So, like right here, my knee wants to bend a little bit. That’s just because of my genetics. I’m kind of a stiffer person. But let your foot turn all the way-out row, roll that leg out, you have to actively turn it out and then stretch it down into a stretch. You could get onto a lower surface like this like this chair lower than the table that I’m sitting on, rotated out using your muscles you have to think about turning your foot and your toes outwards and then push it into a stretch.

Again, same intensity zero to 10 we’re talking one or two stretch intensity should not be very hard at all. Once it’s turned all the way out as best as you can. It’s okay if you have a little more room to play with. Just get into as best as you can, then hold it there and you’re giving yourself a little bit of pressure, no need to bounce up and down. Just kind of feel that one or two stretch intensity and then hang out there. 30 seconds, make sure to keep your leg as relaxed as possible, just be thinking about letting it roll outwards. And then after 30 seconds, you can relax.

Do that, again 30 seconds, turning your foot outwards, avoid the bouncing, the reason for avoiding the bouncing is because what tends to happen is as people bounce, they, they get more and more and more intense with their stretch. And that’s, that’s going to be a bad thing for your knee in the long run, you want to just keep it light, because that’s what’s going to free up your knee the best.

And once you’ve done your second round of 30 seconds, and we’re going to look at your kneecap, your kneecap is right about here, you want to grab around your kneecap with your fingers like this, make like a circle shape a doughnut shape with your index fingers and your thumbs, you can use other fingers if you want.

You know, if you have hand problems, it doesn’t really matter as long as you grab a hold of your kneecap, because then what you’re going to do is here you do want to bounce, lightly move it down. So, notice how I’m moving my whole body down, not just my hands like this, like you have to relax your leg and hold your leg on this position, you can do it up like this. And just let your kneecap move down gradually.

I’m pushing it with the edge of my thumb’s right here, in this direction. And you can do this standing, as soon as you stand up, your kneecap tensions up, and you won’t get much movement out of it, you’re going to pull it upwards like this, I’m using my other fingers, you could use your middle fingers, or whichever fingers you decide to use, you’re going to pull that kneecap upwards, very gentle again, you can go a little bit harder on this than you did on the stretches.

But you don’t want to go into any sort of pain. The back of the kneecap could be arthritic, in your situation, you might have a loss of cartilage a reduction in the thickness of the cartilage or might just be irritated as well. You could have damage or bumpy surfaces on there that are causing noises like popping, grinding, crunching sounds inside your kneecap. As long as it’s not painful, you should be able to do this just fine.

If you have pain that you might want to avoid this one, so that you’re not aggravating your kneecap any worse. But you just want to wiggle it down about 10 reps, then wiggle it up about 10 reps, the order isn’t important. You can go side to side now this one’s a little more aggressive. So, if you have kneecap problems, if you feel like it hurts when you do this, you proceed with caution on this one, don’t go into it too fast.

So, for the sides, you are going to go inwards and outwards, I would recommend going inwards 10 times first and outwards 10 times the order again isn’t super important, you just want to make sure you get all the directions. And intensity again needs to be light, you have to stay at a one or a two out of 10. Once you start passing 3, 4,5 bad stuff starts happening your overpressure the joint, you overpressure e the cartilage, and you’re going to contract muscles that add to the pressure as well. And you’re not going to get the full benefit out of your stretching.

The last stretch you’re going to do this is going to take a quick minute is you’re going to rotate your knee we call these knee twists. So, because he has a matter of rotation that you’re just going to turn your foot all the way in and all the way out. And it’s okay if your whole thigh goes with it. Ideally, you want to minimize thigh motion and just make it come from your Foot Ankle. But if you feel like you need to move your whole leg to get this motion because it’s not normal motion to do.

That’s okay to do that. Just make sure that your Foot Ankle goes all the way in all the way out and do this about 20 to 30 times. As long as it’s not bothering you, you’ll actually feel muscles working during this time, that’s okay. But inside the joint, you can feel and if you can see your knee joint moving this way it’s twisting. And that’s a good thing because the meniscus is going to move in there, you’re going to get the fluid to move in there, you’re getting your knee to free up as a result of that.

Now the angle at which your knee is for this is comfortable generally in the 20-to-30-degree range is fine. I mean, I’m eyeballing in here, probably about 25 degrees or so. But find the angle that your knee needs to be in for you to best do this if you feel if you’re all the way straight, you’re still going to get some rotation, but it’s just not going to be as much as if your knees a little bit bent. And if you’re fully bent, you might feel that you get motion out of it this way to it isn’t super important. I just need you to get that twist to happen inside your knee comfortably.

Now if you have an old ligament injury, like an MCL tear or an ACL tear, just make sure that you’re not going into any sort of popping or clicking with this because you might have that as a result of your old ligament injury. Just twist a comfortable amount inwards and outwards. You don’t have to go 100% In and 100% out, maybe 50% in and see what you can do comfortably without aggravating any sort of clicking or popping.

Once you’ve done that, you’ve done your routine, it should take you about five minutes. Once you practice this a few times, you’ll probably even get it down to three or four minutes. And like I said earlier, you can do this as much as you like, you just have to be careful to not overdo it on your knee. Now, let me give you three reasons that your knee is becoming too stiff.

The first one I was just talking about, if you overdo it on things, especially like over stretching, stretching too intensely causes the muscles around the knee, like the quad muscles, the hamstrings, and the calf muscles in the lower leg to want to contract, it’s a reflex in our bodies known as a stretch reflex, we have cells inside of those muscles that detect when your muscles are being stretched too much, it makes your muscles want to contract to protect the muscle from tearing more. And that causes added pressure to the joint.

So, stretching intensely is just not a good idea. And it’s kind of counterintuitive, or not what you think because most people feel kind of good after doing an intense stretch. And the reason for that is because they’re working out their muscles, and they’re doing things inside their body. But the effects on the joint where you get that extra pressure aren’t felt immediately.

Typically, they they’re felt later on the next day, like when you wake up in the morning, and you had your knee stiffness, or if you’ve been sitting around for a while, and then your knee gets stiff, you have trouble taking those first few steps and you have to free up your knee. That’s when you’re feeling the effects of that intense stretching that you might have done yesterday or last week or that you’ve been keeping up for the past several months.

So, you got to back off on intense stretching, overdoing stretching is likely feeding into your knee stiffness problem. If you’ve been doing that. The second most common reason that people have stiffness in their knee is exercising, when their knees irritated, you might have realized that your knee kind of goes up and down in irritation like you have good days and bad days, you know, good days, you feel like you can do quite a bit your knees not as stiff, you feel almost normal, those days are a lot less stiff than other days.

If you’ve had stiffness for a longer period of time. If you go do exercise during that time, and I’m not just talking about going to the gym or going on a walk, it might be that you’re doing exercises around the house like you’re on your feet doing chores, you’re cooking, maybe around holiday times, and you’re in your feet a bit more to cook meals or spend time with family, those times could be contributing to your knee being stiff, because you’re using your muscles that are adding pressure to the knee joint, you’re going to stiffen up the knee joint, you’re compressing the cartilage compressing the meniscus, all the tissues that are inside the knee joint, when they get over compressed, they lose their lubrication, which feeds into that knee stiffness.

So, you’ve got to be careful with how much activity that you’re doing. And not over exercising your knee, you have to make sure that you get irritation down. And if you find that you have a certain threshold, this is important. You’ve got to find how much you can tolerate before you push yourself over the edge and you’re paying for it later on that day or the next day. So, for you if you feel like you can only be doing activities for like 20 minutes or 30 minutes at a time. And then you’ve got to go sit down, you’ve got to listen to your body so that you’re not passing that timeframe that you’re currently limited by.

If you can do your best to just take a break by sitting down, go, go get some water, take a little TV break. If you’re doing chores at home, if you’re exercising, you just have to stop for a minute or do something with your upper body for a while, you have to follow what your body allows you to do. Otherwise, you’re going to be making your stiffness or worse and worse over time, which is going to make your arthritis worse and worse over time, you’re just going to progress way faster than you should be. Now related to this one.

The third most common reason is being on your feet too much. It’s not just exercise because exercise could be you know, sitting on machines doing gym exercises, you might be sitting down or lying down doing exercises and that could be feeding into it. But being on your feet too much like some people don’t go to the gym. They’re just on their feet all day they they’re just busy bees, they don’t like to be sedentary or sitting at home.

They like to be cleaning their home, cooking out doing errands out shopping. And by the end of the day doing this, they they’re just done in their knees. They’re stiff, they’re painful, they’re swollen as well. And the stiffness of pain that comes on ends up accumulating over the over time over the days and weeks and it causes inflammation at the knee joint.

That’s what sets up a loss of lubrication and bad stuff inflammation to happen inside the knee which people end up feeling in the morning or after they’ve been sitting for a while a common complaint that we hear from people that have knee arthritis as they go sit for an hour or two to watch TV or watch a program watch YouTube and then when they stand up those first few steps are just tougher then they’re hobbling or they have to wiggle their knee loose are just kind of grit through some painful steps for the first minute or so. And then they loosen up.

That needs to reduce if you allow that to continue to increase the amount of time that it takes you to unstick, even if it takes you 1530 minutes or more an hour or more, to unsticking yourself in the morning when you wake up your knee arthritis is getting worse, and you’re on the pathway to eventually having some severe surgery done like a knee replacement or some sort of arthroscopic surgery.

You can avoid that altogether if you can get your knee stiffness under control by following this stretch routine and the advice that I’m offering you here. Now we’ve got tons of exercises, we got tons of other advice on knee arthritis if you’re dealing with swelling. If you’re looking for more exercises, not just stretches, go check out our knee arthritis playlist.

We’ve got tons of videos in there that will guide you on how to help out your knee arthritis problem that’s in the description below, along with some other helpful information down in the description. Hey, give us a thumbs up if you thought this video was helpful. And don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already and share this with somebody that needs to hear this.

Chances are you’ve got knee arthritis; you probably have a friend or a loved one that also has the arthritis that needs to hear this so share this video with them so that they can get some free help for that as well. Thanks so much and we’ll see in the next video guys. Buh bye.