Top 5 Exercises To Start Doing To Successfully Avoid A Knee Replacement

In this video, I’m going to show you the top five exercises that you need to start doing to successfully avoid a knee replacement. Now these exercises are a great starting point, there is a progression of exercises that you should pursue over time as you improve, in order to get the long-lasting results of completely avoiding any replacements. But you’ll want to start with these here on this video.

Today, you’ll need to do these exercises in order so that you can get your muscles activated properly for the fifth exercise. And after I’d cover these exercises, you’ll want to watch the rest of the videos so that you can know what to do in case these exercises aren’t helping you out.

My name is Dr. David Middaugh Finn, 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 knee surgery, injections and pain medications. Please consider subscribing so that you don’t miss out on any single video that we post. Now let’s get straight to it.

The first exercise that you need to start doing is a tailgate swing. Now, this is a great exercise that kind of mimics using a bicycle. But there’s no equipment needed, except for a place that you can sit where your feet dangle. And even if your feet don’t dangle a bit, it’s okay, I’m going to adjust the camera angle here. So you can see my feet just a bit better.

All you do is sit somewhere where your feet dangle and you just move your legs back and forth just like this, the pace doesn’t matter, you don’t have to go very fast, you don’t have to go super slow, it should be comfortable for you, the amount of motion that you’re doing can vary depending on what you feel comfortable with. Again, you can do big swings, if you like you can do little, tiny swings.

The point of this exercise is to get some unweighted movement in through your knees. You know, wait, this is movement where you’re not putting your body weight through there, you’re not using your muscles aggressively. And what that does for your knee joints is it allows the fluid to circulate inside your knee joint so that you can get the nourishment from the fluid to the cartilage to all the areas that are injured, so that you can allow it to heal.

Just doing this little movement like this does a ton of good for your knees, you got to do this for about five minutes, I’d say a minimum of about five to even 10 minutes at a time. And this does need to be done frequently. By frequently I mean as much as you possibly can, I would get obsessed with doing this exercise any chance you get if you got any problem.

Minimum, I would do a total of about 15 to 30 minutes a day. If you can do an hour or more a day spread out over time, that would be the best scenario so that you can get tons of consistent fluid motion in that knee joint and allow the cartilage inside the knee to heal so that you can get that relief that you’re looking for. Let’s get the camera back up just a bit so you can see me because we’re going to do a knee flexion stretch.

So what this looks like, is, um, I’m guessing that if your knee situation is really bad, like your knee arthritis is severe, there’s a chance that if you haven’t already that you’re going to lose some motion, meaning you won’t be able to bend your knee all the way or straighten out all the way. If that’s the case, then you’ve got to do this here to maintain the motion that you do have, so that you can have a chance at exercising into the later progressions of exercise, and effectively prevent the long-term problems that come with knee arthritis.

So it let’s say this is the knee that’s involved, I want you to bend it gently into a little bit of a stretch. And let me coach you on how to do that on a scale of zero to 1010. Meaning an intense stretch where you might even rip something inside your knee, you’re going to go at about a two or three it should be a light stretch, it shouldn’t be aggressive at all shouldn’t hurt, do not go hard in this one harder is not better.

You’re going to bend that knee gently here and notice I have my foot on a footstool here. That is an ideal thing to do is set your foot down somewhere. If you’re on a sofa or a couch, put it on a on a chair next to you get your foot supported somehow, in order for you to get the best knee stretch like knee stretch without holding your leg up in the air.

Now if you have to hold your leg up in the air, it’s not a terrible thing either do it you might be able to do it effectively, and still get the stretch. So we’re looking for you want to hold the stress for 30 seconds. You’re looking to do three rounds of this. So 30 seconds and then rest a few seconds, whatever you need to. And then do it again for 30 seconds, and then rest again and then do it for 30 seconds.

You pause me if you need to let those 30 seconds go by. And the reason for the 30 seconds is you if you do more than that and you get diminishing returns so it’s not necessary to stretch for a very long time and diminishing returns in case you’ve never heard that term, that just means that you’re not going to get that much more effect for stretching longer, you kind of get what you’re going to get out of the stretch within the 30 seconds. doing less than that just doesn’t give it enough time to kind of calm down and so in.

So 30 seconds, it tends to be about the sweet spot more than a minute is really not necessary, in my opinion. So stretching does not need to take a long time, I get patients all the time, that will take 30 minutes just to stretch or longer even, I mean, that’s what they need to start out with in the morning.

But if you find the right mix for you, it shouldn’t be that much. And it should be effective for you to feel looser, after you’ve done it, that should be the effect that you’re looking for you feel better, you feel looser, not more agitated, more irritated, and like you’re going to have to limp in order to walk afterwards, you just feel like you walk better. So that’s a knee flexion stretch, the neck stretch is a extension stretch.

For this one, you’re going to want to turn your foot outwards, like so. So get your foot your leg extended. Now I’m bending my knee here to pretend like I can’t extend my knee all the way. But you want to get it to as much as it’ll comfortably go. You don’t want to force it down yet, you’re going to be pushing it down a bit.

But once you there, rotate your whole leg outwards. So I’m letting my left foot fall outwards right here. And I’m going to put my hands like so thumb over thumb, over my thigh, not on my knee, but on my thigh. And I’m going to gently push my bodyweight into my leg here. So that I feel as a gentle stretch. Again, just like with the knee bending one, zero to 10 intensity of stretch, you’re looking for about a two very most of three.

If you pass it through, you’re hitting the four you need to back off, there’s reflexes inside of muscles that cause the muscle to want to contract, the more intensely you stretch it, you need to be fighting against those reflexes that you really can’t control. And it just ends up creating more pressure at your knee joint and further injuring it. So a hard intense stretch is really not necessary, it might feel like you’re doing good because you feel things working and happening.

But in the long run, you actually have aggravated the knee problem for longer and you keep it there for longer than it needs to be. So if you just stick to a light stretch, for me that’s about it. I feel like a two out of 10 right there. Now I just got to wait 30 seconds, and try to relax, not tense up. And after 30 seconds, I can let it go. And do it again. Now, you’re not wrong. If you want to go longer than a minute, if you want to go longer than 30 to 60 seconds, you cut it, you want to stretch 30 minutes, because it just feels good.

You certainly can’t, it’s not going to hurt you to stretch for a long time. What will hurt you is stretching intensely, please don’t stretch intensely, that is not a beneficial thing for you to do in the long term. Same number of reps here, you’re going to go 30 second holds, or more if you want and do about three rounds of this, it shouldn’t take you more than a few minutes to stretch both the internal rotation I’m sorry, the flexion right here, and the extension with what we call external rotation.

And the fourth exercise we’re going to cover is a butt activation exercise. Now I’m going to give you some options for this one, because what I really care about is that you wake up your butt muscles, my favorite go to exercises are going to be the bridge, a clam, and just a glute contraction in standing or lying down.

Now the purpose here is just to turn on the butt muscles because the fifth exercise that I’ll cover next requires you to have your butt muscles on. Now, if you just inserted right now if you sit down or if you’re standing, that’s fine too, you can do this and standing. If you think about tightening up your butt muscles. If they both tighten up and you can feel them both working, then you’re in a good spot.

And just you can do this exercise if you want that I’m going to show you right next, but it’s not going to be the best one for you to start with necessarily. It’s not going to hurt you but you’re going to need more advanced exercises what I’m getting at, if you tighten up your glutes and you’re like, I don’t know if it’s working back there. I’m unsure if you have that uncertainty that your glutes are working and you’re feeling back there and you’re thinking, is it the right muscle? I don’t know.

Then you’re going to start with this exercise. You’re just going to make sure that your glutes turn on. In sitting sit down. I’ll tell I’ll show you standing up in just a moment. Squeeze your butt muscles. Hold it for 10 seconds, your thighs might shift a little bit that’s okay. After 10 seconds, relax your butt muscles and do it again.

We’re going to do it 10 times. Squeeze your butt muscles. You should feel your whole body lift a little bit because the muscles into your cheeks stiffen up and thicken and after about 10 seconds, let it go. If you want to get a better contraction, open your knees up and tighten like that. And that should allow your body to tighten up better, you could just do with your legs just like this too.

As long as you feel your butt muscles tightening up, you’re on the right track. So you would do 10 reps of this or enough to get your butt muscles to work, you do want to get them to contract. So you want to be more than 10 reps, or hold longer than 10 seconds. That’s cool.

By the way, there’s a reason for the 10 second hold, don’t do anything less. There’s a scientific reason the way the muscles work something called muscle technique, you can Google it if you want. That is a effect in muscles that when you hold it, when you hold an isometric contraction, you will get a much better contraction as you move forward into later reps. So the holds are really important.

Now if you want to stand up to fire your glutes to get your glutes activated. Same thing, you’re just going to be in standing, I’m going to show you the side here in the back for you. And you want to suck in your abs first so that you slouch up top right here, that’s really important, it’s going to help you get a better glute contraction, then you’re going to squeeze these muscles back here and it should shove your hips forward. And that’s all you should be doing right there. So abs in, and then but tight.

So from this view right here, abs in, but tight, you feel like these muscles are hurting up and you’re going in this direction right here. If you’re for the front view, abs in right here, my chest and shoulders are going to come down a bit. And then my hips are going forward. It’s like a hip thrust type motion, but it should make your glutes activate very well. And that standing position for some people that works best for them over the seated one because in sitting, your hips are bent, and so your glutes are technically lengthen and they just don’t fire as good versus standing.

Let’s say your glutes work fine, and you want the harder exercise, then you would go to bridge. So it looks like this, you’re going to lie down on your back, knees bent just like so you got to push your back flat and then squeeze the butt muscles. And then in this position, I haven’t even lifted up my headsets to do in a bridge, then you just lift up a little bit, only lift up a little bit because if you lift up really high, you’ll start to get a stretch on the front of the thighs and hips up here.

And you don’t want that. You want to only lift to the point where you feel a little stretch, if anything, and a pretty good glute activation back here. After about 10 seconds, come on down. And a tip here to get the glutes to fire better is open your knees, you might turn your feet out a bit so that your toes are pointed out and widen your knees and then do the same thing.

Push your back down for some sucking in my abs pushes the back down right here. And then I’m going to squeeze my butt muscles. Together I’m trying to hard number or clench and tight, then I’m lifting up a little bit. That gets us Bob muscles to activate 10 second hold 10 times. If you want an even harder exercise a little more intense, but focused exercise, a bridge or clamshell exercise what you want to do.

Now bridges and clams are very commonly done in physical therapy clinics. You’ve probably seen them on the internet, you’ve been looking for exercises, but they’re not done the way I’m showing you here, you’ve got to set your abs first. And you’ve got to get the glutes to work on the bridge that’s critical to get the best effect out of the butt muscle exercise out of the Butt muscle that you know the contraction that you’re doing.

On this clamshell. What you’ve got, what you’re going to be doing different here is rolling your hips forward. So I’m rolling my upper body and my hips forward so that I can target the muscle that’s back here where my back pocket is right here. What people commonly do wrong on a clamshells is pick up their leg like this. And then they feel this muscle working on the front of the thigh on the side of the thigh. And even on the front pocket area of the hip. And that’s not what you want working.

You actually want the butt muscle working back here where the back pocket is. So you’ve got to roll your hips forward. And then you’re going to pick up your hip, your knee from there, and you can see my knee doesn’t come up very high. I already feel my glute working right there. And if I come up higher, there comes a point about right there where now I feel my quad working. And that’s not a good thing. I want to just focus on the on the Butt muscle. I’m trying to activate it for this fifth exercise.

So come up and hold for 10 seconds just like the bridge and the seated glute contraction. And then you can relax. And once you’ve done 10 reps like that, then you can you can be done with it. You could do the other side you could flip over roller roll over into the other side. Now at this point, you should feel like your glutes are active. Your knees should feel a little looser. Now you’re prepared for the fifth exercise.

What we’re going to be doing is raising the roof. I call this a razor roof exercise. And what it is it’s a mini squat. I want you to put your arms into it because it helps you to get a better glute activation. So you’re going to be in standing. Make sure that you’re somewhere that maybe in front of a chair occasionally to sit down if you begin to lose your balance and stuff. Big deal, and you’re not going to be doing a big squat.

To show you the motion here, you’re going to be doing just a slight bend. So just like this, let me show you my hips to change the angle a bit here. It’s just a slight bend like this. And when I come up, I’m tightening up my hips, just like I showed you that standing version of the glute tightening, tighten up the hips, it’s like a bridge, kind of, but now my knees are straight.

And you should feel like the glutes are activating every single time hips should be going forward, what you don’t want to do is arc your back, you see him argument back right there, you don’t want to stick out your chest or your stomach, which causes you to arch your back, you actually want to suck in those abs, and just bend your hips and knees.

Now, once you’ve gotten that motion down, you’re going to put the upper body into it. And when you come down, you’re starting the down position, hands are going to be right here. And then when you come up and you get those hips tight, you’re going to reach up and you got to shrug. So it’s like this, and up.

Little squat up, you can squat deeper, if you want, doesn’t need to be super deep, let’s say the rest of my body here, sorry, this room is limited in size, our clinic areas is small, because we use small rooms for a treatment area. So we don’t have big, open spaces where I can get a very good angle, I’ll get a little more space to play with.

Alright, so like this, and then up. And what you’re going to do here is 50 to 100 reps, now I’m bending my knees a decent amount. But if you need to just do a little baby bend, that’s fine. If you can reach your arms up all the way, that’s fine. Just do shrug your shoulders a bit when you come up and squeeze your butt muscles every time you come up. So a little down a little up.

If you have creaky knees, or your knees hurt right now, don’t go download, just do what you can barely unlock your knees, you can just bend your knees a little bit, just make sure that when you come up, you squeeze those butt cheeks really hard. And get those muscles to activate very well. And I’m not counting here, but I want you to count 50 reps, you might pause this video and just do the reps once you’ve gotten the motion down and get all 50 reps. And if you feel like you can make it to 100 Go for it, you have to do them continuously.

If you want to do these taking breaks, you know where you do like 10 reps, and then you take a little break, you could do that. And you could do two sets of 20 sets of 25. Whatever feels comfortable for you. But you need to work away from about 50 reps up to 100 reps. And this is something that you would do daily, this whole routine that I just describe to you.

If I had a knee arthritis problem, and I was looking to avoid a knee replacement, I would be looking to do this whole routine daily. And parts of the routine more often like the tailgate swings, you need to be doing those quite often getting your need to stretch bending and straightening out, you might do while you’re just relaxing somewhere, sitting you know, if you go to the movie theater, that’s something that’s easy to do.

If you’re sitting at home watching a movie or if you’re having a meal usually with your family, they might know what’s going on, you might stretch out your knee just for the sake of keeping it mobile. Those are things that you can do frequently throughout the day. But the glute bridges, the clams, and the razor roof exercise those three exercises you might look to do at least once a day or more if you can tolerate it without throwing up your knee problem. And there’s a focus on getting your glute muscles strong.

You might have watched this video and thought we didn’t really do a whole lot on the knees. And that’s true. The knee joint itself you don’t need more strength than knee typically Usually it has more strength than it already needs. And that’s what’s causing the excessive compression that’s flaring up the arthritis and wearing down the cartilage inside the knee causing a bone-on-bone situation possibly or irritating the meniscus, causing a meniscus tear, that pressure needs to be alleviated.

And if you go to strengthen your quads, your hamstrings, or the calf muscles that directly without making sure the glutes have enough strength up in the hip area, then you’ll increase the pressures at the knee joints and make it a worse situation that can technically lead you down the road of getting near replacement faster than you should.

If you focus on the glutes up in the hip and get those strong and get those to activate daily do your razor roof exercise your bridge exercise, then you’re in a much better position to be able to avoid that knee replacement for the long term because you’ll be offloading the pressures in the knee. If your knees respond well to these exercises, then you might consider taking the next step and checking out our 28 Day Knee Health And Wellness Boost Program.

This program is 100% online, and it’s on demand so you can play it whenever you want. And it’s focused on getting your knees healthier by getting the right muscles stronger. We’re fixing the root problem of the knee arthritis issue. Look for the link in the description below for more details.

Now let’s answer the question of what if you did these exercises, and they didn’t work out for you what to do next? Well, there’s three options that I need you to go through to determine that this is not going to work for you. One is, make sure you’re doing these exercises correctly, make sure that you’re firing your glutes just like I made a big deal about on this video, fire your glutes and not your quads.

If you are going through these exercises, and then any point you feel like you’re getting a big stretch in your quads, or the quad muscles are activating, like when you’re trying to do that raise a roof exercise, then that is going to negatively affect your knee joints, you have to back off on the reps back off on the intensity, or take some time just to get your glutes to activate properly without getting your quads to turn on.

So that you can more effectively do these exercises. If you go and do exercises to get your quads active every single time the front of your thigh, it’s going to make your knee problem worse. And that could be a reason why this didn’t work out for you. The second thing to try is give it a few days, literally give it three days go through this exercise routine if you haven’t done much, especially and this is the first exercise routine you’ve picked up and you’re trying to avoid any replacement surgery, you might just be sore, your joints might be stiff, and that could be uncomfortable for a couple of days.

If the third day of doing this actually feels better, then you got something good on your hands. And you need to keep going through this routine to make sure that you free up the knee joint fully and then you start to get the benefit of that strengthening in the glute so that it offloads your knee. And let’s say that you check the exercises, and you gave it three days and it still didn’t work for you.

Then you need to go see some professional help in person. Go see a ideally a manual therapist like myself, or go find any health care professional that’s within your reach wherever you are, so that you can get some professional guidance on what to do about your knee situation. The fact of the matter is you’re watching me online here on YouTube. I can only do so much without seeing you in person. And so we’re limited here about what we can do.

You’ve got to go spend the money, spend the time, do the steps they take you through to figure out what needs to happen next, in order for you to avoid any replacements. Guys, if you thought this video was helpful, give us a thumbs up.

If you have any questions drop them as a comment below or just drop a comment to say hello as well or that you liked this video. Thanks so much and we’ll see you in the next video. Bye