Top 5 Chondromalacia Patella Exercises That Make Knee Pain Better

Knee pain from Chondromalacia Patella can heal 100% If you’re doing the right exercises, and conversely, if you do the wrong exercises, it’s going to make your knee pain worse. In this video I’m going to show you five Chondromalacia Patella exercises that will begin to heal your knee pain. Be sure to watch to the end of the video because I’m going to cover exercises that make your knee pain worse.

If you have Chondromalacia Patella, they’re exercises you should absolutely be avoided. And some of them you’ll be shocked because they’re exercises that are recommended by healthcare professionals and you might be doing them. If you’re getting treatment from a physical therapist or a doctor somebody of the likes.

The first exercise you should start off with if you’re going to start any exercise is tailgate swing. And it looks just like this, I’m going to explain why you should do this exercise. As I’m doing it here, you’re just kicking your feet back and forth nice and easy.

You have to sit in a place where your feet are off the ground, a bench a stool, a computer chair that you raise up, I’ve got a stool like this one that has a little lever that comes up, find someplace you can sit that your feet will dangle from. And if you don’t have a place, put pillows under your bottom, so that you can be elevated.

You can figure something out to get your feet up and you’re just going to swing your legs back and forth. It doesn’t matter if your feet are swinging together, or apart. It really doesn’t matter the point of doing this, if you think about the cartilage that’s behind your kneecap, I’ve got my knee model here. And just in case you don’t know how Chondromalacia Patella works, there’s a kneecap and behind it right there.

There’s a bunch of cartilage that connects or contacts, the cartilage on the end of the thigh bone. And so when you bend your knee like this, it rubs the bones on each other. That’s how the knee joint is supposed to move. What you need to think about though, is there’s fluid inside the knee joint, it’s called synovial fluid, it’s the fluid that’s inside joints, that fluid acts as a lubricant as well as nourishment to get the cartilage to heal. And the way that you circulate the fluid inside your knee joint is through movement.

So if you can do movement that is light, not aggressive, doesn’t pressure the knee joint too much, then it can actually be a beneficial thing for you to heal your knee cartilage behind your kneecap and on the end of your thigh bone. That’s why tailgate swinging can be critical for you this exercise might be good for you getting out of the initial knee pain that you’re in from Chondromalacia Patella. You want to do this for at least five minutes at a time.

You shouldn’t get tired doing this it should not tire out any muscles in your legs. It should feel comfortable and safe to do and you should be able to do it from virtually anywhere you can find a place to sit a little higher up with your feet dangle. D

o this exercise several times a day, you’re looking at doing it potentially every hour if you have a more severe case of contemplation patella, but doing this simply just once or twice a day for five or 10 minutes at a time is typically not enough, you’ll need to accumulate over time over the day, roughly an hour’s worth of doing this to get a true benefit where you feel like your knee Chondromalacia Patella pain is reducing.

The second exercise you should be doing is activating your glutes. Now this exercise is not going to look very complicated. But you cannot overlook this one, it’s super important because you have got to figure out how to fire your glute muscles, your butt muscles without firing everything else. And this exercise is designed to make you do that without getting this exercise right, the next exercises are just not going to be very easy for you.

In fact, they might actually make you hurt. So don’t skip out on this exercise, you need to do it just right, you can start by lying on your back. And you need to get these muscles to work. Some of you are going to do this exercise and say oh easy piece of cake. But there’s going to be a good amount of you two that say you know what, I have trouble with this one.

If you have trouble with this one, you need to hang out here and just figure this out for as long as it takes. If it takes you weeks, months or longer. That’s okay, take as long as you need because you’re not going to fix your contemplation patella unless you get this down. So on your back like this, push your back down towards the table.

So like I’ve got my hand right here into my back. It’s as if I’m smashing my back down against my hand and holding it there. What you should feel on the front here on the ABS is that they tighten up that they begin to work a little bit. Once you do that. You feel like your hips are tilting like your butts lifting from the table or the floor of the bed wherever you’re doing this from.

And once you do that, now you’ve got to think about squeezing your glute muscles. See how my knees want to go out? Why do you might even open up your feet and push your knees He’s out kind of like a birthing position. And what you have to do is get your back flat and begin to tighten up your butt muscles at the same time.

That is going to make your glutes tired. And that’s what we want. Now, once you kind of figure this first part out, relax, because you’re going to be holding this is going to be 10 second holds. On the next one, the next rep, you’re going to do it again, back flat, but tight. And now you’ve got to think about doing the butt squeezing the tightening your buttock muscles, your glutes, without tightening thigh muscles on the front of your thighs up here in the front of the hips, and the back of the thigh as well.

These muscles all need to stay quiet. So you might not be able to contract as hard as you did a moment ago, you have to figure out the percentage of contraction that you need to do without firing everything else. Because once you start firing these muscles harder, everything’s going to want to fire that’s called co contraction, all the muscles in the legs are going to want to squeeze and tighten up in an effort to get this to work.

But that’s training you inappropriately and it’s going to make your knee problem worse. So keep the feet open, open the knees a bit back flat, then squeeze your butt muscles. And I’m squeezing it about 50% Maybe 60% Here in the glutes. And if I go tighter from here, and now I feel my hip wanting to tighten up just a bit.

So I’m going to back off, pulling it about 70%. And you’re just going to count 10 seconds now 1, 2, 5, 7, 9, 10, then you can relax. And you’re going to repeat that I would do 1020 30 reps, all in a row, even with rest breaks as needed. But the point here is to get your glutes to begin to work better and better, so that you can do the next exercises without firing all the thigh muscles.

Because when you fire all the thigh muscles, those muscles end up compressing your knee joints and causing more bad forces to go through your kneecap and thigh bone, which is going to worsen your condemnation patella, and lead to worse problems like knee arthritis, meniscus tears, things you don’t want to be dealing with. And you can solve this here and now.

Alright, the third exercise is a progression from this one that we just did. If you are on your back, just like you were feet, opened up, knees wide, just a bit nagging to flatten your back, you know, you should be able to get your glutes working without everything else working, then you’re going to lift your bottom up just a bit, I’m talking like a centimeter or two, you know, an inch at most, and you’re trying to just clear your butt from the surface that you’re on.

But making sure to use your glute muscles to do this, hold it for 10 to 20 seconds. And as you’re holding, you should feel that it’s your glutes, your buttock muscles back here, doing most of the work. If you feel like you’re getting a big stretch on the front of your thighs, or you’re using your hamstrings, that the muscles on the back of the thighs here, or you’re using your back muscles in your spine to be able to do this, then you’re doing this wrong, and you got to go back to the last exercise we just did to get your glutes to work right.

Another option is you can start this rep again. So back flat but tight and just lift a teeny tiny bit like if you’re going to start to lift even, maybe you don’t even lift but you have the intent of lifting up or you lift up a millimeter two, just a tiny bit, you know a fraction of an inch, and you hold it there for 10 seconds.

The point here is not to lift as high as you can because if you try it out, try a bad rep or you lift up as high as you possibly can and hold it there. You’re going to feel all these muscles working, you’re probably going to feel a big stretch on the front of your thighs, you’re going to feel your back muscles working, you might even want to cramp and your hamstring.

And all those sensations that you’re getting are signs that you’re doing this the wrong way. And you’re missing using your glute muscles, which is going to make your kneecap pain worse. So be sure that you just barely lift a tiny bit and only lift as high as you can without losing the contraction primarily in your glutes.

Now I get asked all the time, well, what if I go an inch and a half? What if I go a few centimeters, and that’s fine. But make sure that you’re using your glutes you can technically lift up all the way but it needs to be you using your glutes as much as possible more than anything else in your body.

Otherwise, it’s going to feed into your contemplation patella problem. The fourth exercise is a clamshell exercise. Now this is commonly done in physical therapy clinics and commonly recommended throughout the internet, but I want you to do this one different than you’ve ever seen it before. And the reason is because we need to target the muscle that’s right back in here about what your back pocket would be if you’re wearing jeans or pants with pockets.

So start with your knees bent, and you can be on your elbow like me or you can be lying down, put a pillow, whatever you want to do, then you got to look at your knees right here in which you need to make sure get a better angle is before you start the exercise, you need to make sure that you roll from your hips this way, keep your feet stacked on top of each other.

And your knees are bent hips are bent a comfortable amount people ask, well, should it be this way, should it be this way, you’re going to have to figure it out, you’re going to have to troubleshoot it and find the right position, I would say get comfortable. Roll your hips this way so that your top knee now sticks out past your bottom knee from your viewpoint right here. So it should feel like your knees sticking out.

When you do that, it’s going to align your hips in a way, that’s going to make you use this muscle where your back pocket is best. Because if you can do that, if you can target this muscle back here, now you’re making clamshells super-efficient for healing your knee problem, because you’re going to take the pressure off your knee joint by using this muscle over here.

So once you’re in this position, now you’re going to lift up your leg and hold it there for 10 seconds, the holds are important to a lot of people just go up and down up and down is not the same. You’ve got to hold it and feel this muscle back here tighten up and work. If you can get this muscle where your back pocket, working, tightening up getting a little tired, then you’re on the right track.

Now, if you’re doing this exercise, and you’re feeling your thigh muscle working mostly or the front of the hip, like where your front pocket is, that’s not good, you’re going to make your problem worse as time goes on. And it’s confusing because you might not feel any knee pain in the moment doing the exercise incorrectly.

If you’re feeling the muscle burning here or in your thigh, you might be getting false feedback from yourself or even a health care provider or physical therapist or somebody else might be around you saying, Good job, you’re feeling the burn. This is all burning, you’re doing great. But that’s wrong, because it’s going to tighten the muscles, it’s going to strengthen the muscles that put more pressure on the kneecap and the cartilage in the knee joints.

So you don’t want to be doing that. Make sure you roll forward, get the muscle back here to work. And you might need to roll like all the way down like this to get the right position for your hips depending on your body shape. If you’re a female or male, depending on your curves, you might need a role more or a little bit less.

The point is that you feel this muscle working back here. So get in whatever position you need to get this to work. Once you’re up here, and you can get this muscle to work. Now you’re going to hold for 10 to 20 seconds, make sure this is working back here. After that relax, and you don’t need to lift very high.

Notice I’m just I’m lifting about a little more than my hand with right here. Whereas some people will lift all the way up here. And if you try this out, if you do this incorrectly like this, you’ll feel that the back muscle, the glute muscle doesn’t work anymore. Now it’s quads and other muscles working.

So that’s incorrect. A little lift done correctly, is the best way to do this exercise. Hold it for 10 to 20 seconds, you want to repeat this 10 times. And this is what you need to be doing frequently throughout the day. In order to get your glutes working, I would shoot to do 100 reps in a day. On both sides.

Even if your kneecap problems on one side, you need to make sure you develop balance in your muscles from left to right. The fifth exercise that you need to start doing to fix your Chondromalacia Patella is standing glute activation. So this is a progression from the other exercise we did where you’re just tightening your glutes, you need to learn how to do that in standing as well.

So it looks like this. In standing, I’m just going to show you from this angle. Put 50% of your body weight on each leg. So you should be standing with your weight evenly dispersed. Then you need to think about squeezing the glute muscles, tighten the glute muscles and do it in such a way that doesn’t make everything else work in your thighs like in the front of the thighs in the back of your thighs.

The trick here is to fire at the right intensity squeak play with it and see how hard you can squeeze go 100% And then note what muscles are working think about is the front tightening up is the back of the thighs tightening up or the inside of your thighs tightening up as well. If all that is tightening up or even just one of those muscle groups are tightening up, then you need to lessen the intensity that you’re tightening back here instead of going 100% Just go like 50% and play with it go 60% 55%

Try different amounts and hold it at the amount that the percentage that you can hold your glute muscles without firing all the other muscles. Hold it for 10 to 20 seconds and you need to repeat that tent times in a row, you know what the rest breaks if needed this exercise, if you can master it. Now a whole new door is going to open for you because you can begin to do other standing exercises, you can begin to do walk and you can practice stair climbing.

But you need to have mastered how to fire your glutes independently from all your other thigh muscles, so that you can depressurize your knee joint and heal your conundrum relation patella, I would look to do this hourly throughout the day as long as you don’t have any problems with standing. And I would look to make sure that it doesn’t hurt you. None of these exercises should hurt you, it should just tire out your glutes.

But your knee pain should never get worse during these exercises. If it is, then you might need to rest your knee just a bit to the point that you can begin to tolerate these exercises, or do the ones that don’t hurt you and wait on getting to the ones that do her to after your knee pain starts to calm down, you might need to hang out on the tailgate swings for a while before you move on to the other exercises.

That’s okay, your cartilage is just very irritated. But once it’s not as irritated, it can begin to take some light compressive forces without getting more irritated. Now these five exercises are just a starting point. The next part to go into is learning how to walk correctly without using all those muscles and primarily using the glutes and doing the same thing when using stairs.

And we’ve got videos that talk specifically about that about how to walk using your glutes properly and how to use stairs with your glutes properly as well. They’re linked in the description below.

And I’ve also got a program a comprehensive program at fixing the root problem of conundrum relation patella, the root problem is that your quad muscles are typically very dominant, and then your glute muscles tend to be very weak, they’re not as engaged. And you need to flip that imbalance.

There’s a few other things to look at like foot strength can be part of the problem as well. This program it’s called the 28-day knee health and wellness boosts program, this program is designed to fix that imbalance and you go through it over 28 days you should have a good improvement. If you need to go through it again. And again.

That typically begins to get you to the point where you have no pain at all and you’re healing your condemnation patella the correct way so that you’re not running into worse problems, like knee osteoarthritis, or meniscus tears, or other cartilage issues. Now let me tell you about exercises that you absolutely should avoid.

You may already be doing some of these if you’re going to physical therapy or some clinic that is having to do exercises for Chondromalacia Patella. And you know, before I go into these exercises, and before you’re going to start because I know what’s going to happen, you’re going to start to say, Oh, my therapist should know better or my chiropractor shouldn’t be telling me this or my doctor, I can’t believe my doctors telling me and it might be confusing because you might really trust that health care provider and they might be great.

But it’s conflicting with what I’m telling you. And what I need you to understand is, depending on the specialty of your health care provider that you’re seeing, they may just not be specialists in helping people avoid surgery and heal chronic cartilage problems like Chondromalacia Patella, they might be really good at other things, but they just may not be the best at this. And that’s okay.

They I can tell you from experience as a physical therapist, I’ve trained physical therapists in universities and here in the clinic, they’re typically prepared to handle post operative conditions, meaning people that have just had a knee surgery, like if they just had a knee replacement, or a meniscus surgery.

People that work in physical therapy clinics are usually awesome at helping people recover from those problems. But they’re usually not the greatest at helping people avoid getting into the situation where they need a surgery. And they tend to put people through exercises, people that have that don’t want surgery and want to avoid surgery, they tend to give them the same exercises that they’re giving somebody that has had surgery.

So this is why these exercises I’m about to show you are commonly given by healthcare providers because that’s what they’re used to giving out to people that they see with knee problems usually post surgery situations, but they’re not appropriate for people that have not yet had surgery because they feed into the problem that is causing your Chondromalacia Patella, so the first one is straight leg raises another one another name for this, his leg lifts on your back just like this.

You’ll be told to pick up your legs sometimes with an emphasis on where your toe is pointing. They’ll say point your toe in pointing straight up pointed out. But picking up your leg like this in any position is strengthening the muscles in the front of the thigh here especially a muscle called rectus femoris which goes up into the hip.

That muscle along with some other quad muscles is going to compress your knee joint more it’s going to put the kneecap it’s going to pressurize that kneecap against the thigh bone because that rectus femoris muscle is this right here and it attaches directly to the kneecap.

So if you get it stronger, when your knee bends like this, it’s going to just pressurize it more and further or injure and irritate that cartilage behind the kneecap here. And on the end of the thigh bone, along with this is quad sets or quad contractions.

So they might have you sit somewhere with your leg up like this, sometimes I’ll put a pillow or a towel behind your knee, and they’ll tell you tighten your quad muscles right here on the front of your thigh, and push your knee down against a towel or a pillow. Now this is great if you just had surgery, because chances are you can’t fully straight out your knee and your quad muscles do need to wake up, because they usually will not activate well after surgery.

But if you have not had surgery, you probably have your full range of motion. And your quad muscles are probably dominant, they work too well. So you know, you shouldn’t spend time doing this, this is going to actually feed into the problem.

Another exercise commonly done is wall slides that have you squat up and down, rubbing your back on the wall or sometimes put a stability ball one of those big bouncy rubber balls on your back so that you kind of roll with a lot less friction on the wall.

Those exercises will make your quads work primarily they tire the heck out of these muscles. And really don’t put you in a position to use any other muscles in your body. Except these are focused on using these muscles right here, that’s going to compress that knee joint in a bad way.

Using a leg extension machine in the gym is a terrible idea. It’s a machine where you’re going to sit and it’s usually got a pad that sits in front of your shins, your lower leg bones right here. And you might have a plate of weights that you put the pin in. Sometimes you might add plates to the side of the machine somehow.

But the motion is that you’re pushing against that pat on your legs and you’re straightening out your legs. And when you straighten out your legs like so you’re tightening up your quad muscles quite a bit and it’s going to strengthen your quad muscles a lot, which is a bad idea, you’re going to compress that cartilage right behind your kneecap on the end on the end of the of your thigh bone. You want to avoid this exercise at all costs.

I’ve really never seen them in any clinics that I’ve been to any physical therapy clinics that I’ve been a part of. But in gyms, that machine is almost always there, especially your mainstream gyms. And your health care provider might recommend you go do it in an effort to strengthen your quad muscles. Sometimes we’ll even make a big deal about the VMO muscle, the inner part of the quad muscle right here the teardrop shaped muscle.

But you should avoid that as well, because any quad muscle strengthening is going to compress your knee joints and put it in a worse situation over time. Now those are all exercises that you should absolutely be avoiding. But let me tell you about some exercises that might help but might also hurt. It just depends on a few factors that I’ll get into.

These are all going to be your cardio type exercises. So walking, cycling, swimming and other similar activities, like using an elliptical or rowing machine or actually going rowing on the water. And any sports that involve running, jumping, and cutting movements, these activities will worsen your knee problem if you’re using your quads primarily if you have not taken the time to truly learn how to use your glutes.

Whenever you’re doing these activities, then you’re going to by default, use your quads. And especially if you have to jump or cut like what I mean by cut is you move one away and then you stop abruptly to change directions like you might in say soccer or football or any sort of racquet sports.

Volleyball is another one, anything where you’re jumping, and you’re having to lift off the ground real abruptly and you’re using your muscles in a pretty maximal way to get up to the level that you need to if you’re not used to using your glutes to primarily move and even just walk then chances are when you go do that quick set of movements where you do that repetitive movement like walking, swimming, cycling, you’re going to be using your quads as a default muscle and it’s just going to feed the problem over time.

But now if you’ve gone through the time to get your glutes stronger, you can use them better you know that you can use your glutes and you feel those muscles get tired. Whenever you do any of these activities, then they are beneficial for you as long as you don’t have any knee pain. And you should know your body’s going to tell you if that activity is helpful or harmful.

Usually during a walking running, cycling activity, your knee will start to hurt worse, if you’re using your quads too much. And if you’re not using your quads, it’ll tend to feel fine might even help it out. Maybe improve it in during the activity and immediately after you should have a direct response you should know that it helped or hurt. And there’s two other exercises, squats and lunges.

These are also maybe exercises depending on your glutes and how you’re using them. Now squats and lunges with weight especially are going to activate your muscles in your legs. And if you’re not used to using your glutes, then it’s a bad idea to pursue squats and lunges at this time, especially if your kneecap is really flared up right Now you should just be avoiding it and working on getting your glutes to activate properly and easier exercises that begin to strengthen your glutes.

But once you’ve done the work to get your glutes to work, right, and you can confidently use your glutes during squats and lunges. Now squats and lunges might actually be a very good thing for you to move into might even be necessary. I can tell you personally that here in my clinic when I treat patients with Chondromalacia Patella, and similar problems like knee arthritis, because that’s what it progresses to.

If you don’t handle it, right. I eventually get them towards squats and lunges once the time is right once you’re using their glutes, right? And they have confidence that they’re not going to aggravate their knees with certain activities. Hey, I hope this video was helpful for you. Please give it a thumbs up if it was and don’t forget to share it with somebody that you know needs to hear this. I’m sure you know somebody that’s got a knee problem and they’re doing the wrong exercises and you want to help them out.

Send them this video so that they can begin to do the right exercises and get knee pain relief and avoid arthritis and a potential unnecessary surgery later on. Like a knee replacement. Don’t forget to subscribe and turn on your notifications so you don’t miss out on any of our helpful videos we put out every single week. I’ll see you in the next video. Bye