What is the best exercise to help get pain relief from knee arthritis?

In this video, I’m going to answer the question, what is the best exercise to help get pain relief from knee arthritis? Now, the short answer to this question is it depends. Now the rest of this video is going to be about why it depends. I’m going to talk about specific situations where certain exercises are needed. And I’ll preview an exercise and each of the situations as well.

So here’s the specifics of it depends. What phase are you in, have knee arthritis? This is a huge question to answer. And I’m not talking about what stage that’s different. Like if you go to the doctor, and you get an x ray and MRI, though stage or knee arthritis, and we’ll talk we’ll call it stage 1, 2, 3, or four, and the increasing stages mean, it’s more severe, I’m talking about something different.

This is something that I’ve developed, it’s called a phase instead. And what I mean by this is in phase one of the arthritis, it’s talking about a very flared up situation, in stage two, you’re coming out of the flare up, you’re able to do a bit more in stage three, you’re generally not flared up anymore, you can do normal things. But if you push yourself too hard, it’s going to flare up, for sure. And in stage four, you’re feeling fantastic, you don’t really have any problems or limitations.

But if you have an x ray and MRI, they’ll tell you, you got arthritis in your knees, I just want to take this moment to let you know that I have a program called the knee arthritis recovery program, which goes in depth into all of these phases, it tells you exactly how to measure yourself.

There are certain criteria that I use, I’ve really developed this out significantly. And we go into not just exercises, but a bunch of other things that you need to be doing depending on what phase you’re in, so that you can know how to progress yourself through the phases and get to where you’re that phase four, where you’re feeling fantastic.

You don’t have any problems. As far as you know, being able to do things been able to exercise your confidence and your knees and not worried about them flaring up again. Even though you have a little bit of arthritis, if you check your MRI or your X ray, you can find out more about the knee arthritis recovery program in the links in the description below. So let me tell you what type of exercises you should be doing in phase one of knee arthritis. And first, let me just explain a bit more.

In phase one, you’re probably going to be in severe pain, you’re going to have a lot of stiffness, definitely some swelling as well, in phase one, you know, you’re flared up, you don’t want to be on your feet very long, you’re having pain at night consistently, your knee doesn’t bend or straighten out all the way, it may not be all of these factors. But most of these factors, if they’re present in your knee situation right now and your knee arthritis problem, then you’re probably in phase one.

And in phase one, you need to be focused on just getting the pain to come down. Because inside your knee joint, you pull my skeleton over, inside that knee joint, all the tissues in there, the cartilage, the meniscus, the inside part of the knee is irritated, it’s inflamed. That’s the very definition of osteo arthritis or arthritis.

It’s that the joint that’s what on earth means that part of the word. And then itis is inflammation. So you’ve got joint inflammation, and the osteo part just means bone. So it’s bone and joint inflammation. That’s exactly what osteoarthritis is. What got you here is that there’s been a lot of pressure to the area.

Over time, there’s sometimes in activity that just sends you overboard like that time that you were on your feet way too much, or you overdid it exercising, or you just did too many squats, you did too much yard work, there was something that usually sends people over the edge, that’s what often happens.

But it does also happen that people get into this very flirt up knee arthritis situation, without having done that it’s just an accumulation of their normal activities. But they’ve got some underlying root muscle imbalance that’s been setting them up for this that’s been accumulating over time. And now that’s why their knee has blown up or you know, it’s really swollen, stiff, and irritated right now.

So that’s phase one, what you want to do in this phase, as far as movement, activity and exercise, in the best situation, no resistance, just simple, easy movement for your knee is all that you need. In this situation, the best exercise that you can be doing is what I call the tailgate swing, you’re just going to sit somewhere ideally where your feet dangle, and just nice and easy. Swing your feet just like you’re sitting on the back of a tailgate of a truck.

Or if you’re sitting on a swing, for instance, sit somewhere where you can dangle your feet and just swing your feet back and forth. A good place at home would be if you have a computer chair, one that has a little lever that shifts the seat up, shift that seat up. So your feet dangle a bit and just swing your legs back and forth within a motion that feels comfortable. That’s key. Because if it hurts to do this you need you need to do smaller motion.

It’s not wrong if you want to do both legs at the same time or one leg at a time alternating or just only swing the leg that you want to move because that’s the one that bothers you. And the speed isn’t huge either. If you want to go real slow just because that feels better.

For you, that’s okay. If you want to go fast, and do it more aggressively, that’s usually okay too, as long as it doesn’t bother your knees. That’s the key part here, because you’re trying to reduce that inflammation, get that swelling to go down. So you don’t want to do anything that’s irritating for your knee joint.

There is a variety of other exercises and things to worry about in phase one, which we talked about in that knee arthritis recovery program should go check it out, learn more about it, let me tell you about phase two. In phase two, you generally have mild pain, it’s there’s pain there, for sure, it hurts if you’re on your feet for more than just a few minutes. And you’re definitely still getting pain at night.

But you’re able to do a bit more you can tolerate more activities throughout the day. It’s not as bothersome to you maybe you don’t have as many limitations and range of motion either. But it still hurts. You’re actively dealing with it every day, if not every other day for sure if you overdo it right now in phase two, you’re going to go in back into Phase One where you’re all flared up. Again, it’s hurting all the time, you can’t do anything, you got to do those really easy exercises.

In phase two, though, you can begin to do slightly more aggressive exercises, to make sure that you progress towards the next phase and make your knee arthritis better. It’s key in this phase, to start to work your glute muscles, because now that the knee problem is fading down, it’s flaring down.

You don’t have to worry about it, you’ve probably got control over the flare ups, you know how to manage your day, so you don’t overdo it, then you’ve got to continue to bring it down the inflammation, the pain, the swelling, all that stuff. Don’t overdo it. But you’ve also got to activate the glutes because chances are what got you into this situation is you’ve got a muscle imbalance that has caused that excessive pressure in your knee joints.

And usually it’s at the quad muscles in the front of the thigh are way too strong. And the glute muscles are way too weak. It’s a balance between those two muscle groups that sets up the pressures inside the knee joints. And if you don’t have enough glute strength, then by default, even if you don’t have very big quad muscles, they’re going to be the stronger muscle and they’re going to be applying excessive pressure in your knee joints.

And that’s what inflames that poor knee joint, it’s just rubbing on itself way too hard. And if you get the glute muscles to activate better than that takes pressure off the knee joints, and you’re setting yourself up for more long term relief from your knee arthritis problem. That’s what moves you into phase three and four.

So great exercise that you can start doing right now to begin to activate your glutes and prepare them to do more aggressive activities later on your glutes and your knees, of course, but safely is a climb exercise. And it looks just like this, you may have done this one. In physical therapy, if you’ve ever been in physical therapy, you may have seen this on the internet.

But I do it a little bit different. And I need you to pay attention to exactly how I do it. I’m going to lie on my side right here, knees over each other hips and knees bent feet stacked on top of each other as well. You don’t want to have your feet separated like this. If you need to be right on top of each other, then here’s the key difference that I take people through, you need to roll your body and your hips over this way.

So that you’re almost going to lie face down. What that does is it shifts the top leg over the bottom legs so that your knee up here is sticking out forward past your bottom knee two or three inches several centimeters here. When you’ve done that, now you’re ready to lift your leg, you’re going to lift your leg just a bit, just like that lift your knee, keep your feet touching to begin with, there’s versions where you separate your feet and do stuff with your feet.

But for just the first version, you’re going to keep your knee up like that what you should feel is burning back here tightening in the muscle that’s back here about where you put your hand in your back pocket. That’s the muscle that you need to focus on. Because if you don’t do that role, then you’re going to lift this way and you won’t feel it in that back area, you might actually feel it on the front of your thigh, right here on the front, outside part of the hip.

These muscles feed into that knee pressure problem. If you get the muscles working on the front of the thigh and this one that’s right here, the TFL muscle, those muscles can directly increase the pressure in your knee joint, which feeds the problem and you don’t want to do that. So it’s really important that you do this exercise correctly the way that I’m telling you here so that you avoid working these muscles in the front and get this one working back here.

This is where people run into problems because they’ll go do the clamshell exercise, expecting it to help their near arthritis problem, but they’re actually working the muscles that feed into it. And that’s why they ended up not really progressing with this exercise. They’ll feel it burn they’ll feel the muscles burn on the front of the thigh, but they won’t necessarily improve their knee arthritis.

And then they end up giving up giving up on physical therapy or giving up an exercise altogether and potentially marching down the pathway of having a knee replacements when it is not necessary if you work the right muscles, the backside of the glutes.

So phase three, what exercises do you do then in phase three, your knee pain is probably under control, your arthritis isn’t really bothering you day to day anymore, maybe just here and there once or twice a week, it’s much more manageable and tolerable.

Usually, people in this phase are kind of learning to live with it, because it doesn’t go away right away, but it’s still there, but they can still be active. The biggest hallmark of phase three is people have this feeling, they might even say it and maybe even verbalize it, they might say, I can do everything except this thing. I can clean the house, I can go shopping.

But if I’m on my feed more than an hour, then I feel it. I can go to the gym. Unless I do this one exercise, then my knees worse I swell or it really affects my knee. There’s always that thing or that that threshold that people know of that they’ve met once or twice before maybe more than that. And if they overdo it past that threshold, or they do that activity, they are flared up and they’re moving back into phase two and even phase one if they really overdo it.

And a lot of people just kind of live right here in phase three where they know the arthritis is there at patients that infamously call their knee arthritis, they are three lives with me he’s sleeping with me, he’s with me all day long, he’s goes to the store, he goes to the gym. Arthur knee arthritis is what they’re talking about, is just falling around everywhere.

And that is not a good place to be it is possible to get it to calm down even further, where you don’t have to think about your knee arthritis every week or every day. So what needs to happen exercise wise in phase three, is you need to start to load your knee or put pressure through your knee the correct way.

Because at this phase, you can take some forces, but you’ve got to gradually load them on and make sure that you’re using the right muscles to do so. So that you’re gradually increasing the integrity or the strength of the cartilage in your knee. Because it will respond.

You can make the cartilage in your knee get stronger, thicker, healthier and better able to take more forces without making your arthritis worse, if you do the right things, the easiest exercise you can start with is what I call a baby squats.

And let me show you what this looks like. And the really important thing to focus on here is your glutes. So I’m going to show you my glutes here, you have to be able to engage both glutes like tighten them up. It looks like this sideways like you’re squeezing your, your glutes, you’re shoving your hips forward when you do that, right for the baby squat. Here’s what it needs to look like you need to work on your glutes, those need to be active.

So you need to tighten up the glutes, it should push your hips forward. Here’s what it looks like from the side view. And when it does that, it should make your knees kind of want to slightly bend. So it’s already putting you into a little bit of a squat. Now baby squat is exactly what it sounds like you’re not going all the way down.

It’s like a mini squat, you’re just barely bending your knees. Because if you bend your knees more, it starts to pressurize your knee joint more, which can create more inflammation. If you’re pushing your knee to the point that it’s not ready to go. But you need to push your knee to what it can tolerate so that you can begin to stress it in a good way and get it stronger over time.

Just like muscles get stronger if you put the right loads on them. If you lift weights, appropriately, the right amounts and give it the right rest. Same thing happens inside knee joints with cartilage. If you load it the right way, give it enough rest.

Over time, it gets healthier and stronger and better able to tolerate more activities, which is essentially what makes you pain free and able to do everything you want to do. Even if you’ve been told you have severe knee arthritis. So here’s how I do baby squats. You got to hold them feet apart about hip or shoulder width, there’s no magic number, turn your toes out that’s important.

Then you’re going to shove those hips forward by tightening up your glutes knees are going to want to bend already. You should not feel much pressure at all in your in your knees at this point. At this point. It should feel like your glutes are just holding on tight. They’re tightening up really well. Then bend your knees slightly if you can, to the point where you feel like you barely start to get a little bit of pressure in your knees.

Then back off a bit. Hold it there for 10 seconds. In this position. You should feel like your glutes are just working hard. What you can do if you don’t feel your glutes work hard is check two things. Shove the knees out, see what it did there. Shove the knees out, not your feet, you’re not spreading your feet apart more. You’re just opening your knees. And then when you do that to show the hips more forward like that.

That should load your glutes better and actually take some pressure off your knees. If you felt pressure on your knees So from the side view looks like this, get the glutes turned on, bend the knees a bit, check that your knees are open all the way and then hips forward all the way, your spine should be kind of straight up and down.

This is different from a typical scour a typical squat, where people bend their spine over quite a bit and their shoulders and head come towards her knees and feet, that is going to make you use your quads a lot, which is going to pressurize your knee, and they might activate your back and cause back problems too. If you’re keeping your back pretty straight and your glutes tucked under you like that, it should turn on your glutes and help your knees for the long term.

Now I have people hold this squat and get better at getting lower with good glute activation without aggravating their knees. And the better they get at that gradually over time, for some, it’s weeks, for most, it’s months, maybe even a year to develop enough cartilage integrity to get their cartilage in their knee joint healthy enough to be able to take more loads, because that’s what you have to do in Phase four.

So what exercises you’re going to be doing in Phase four of knee arthritis, you now you have to add some weights to it, you have to begin to weightlifting. So in Phase four real quick, you should be feeling fantastic.

This is really what I call the prevention phase, your knees don’t really bother you, you haven’t really thought about knee pain in a while. It’s a thing that’s in the past, it’s been a month or more since you’ve had knee problems, you feel fantastic, you’d be on your feet, you can, you can do whatever you want, you can bend over or do house chores, go to the store exercise you’ve been doing everything you want to do, and your knees aren’t really a problem, they’re not swelling, and they’re not really stopping you in any way.

If you’re in that situation. And only if you’re in that situation, should you begin to add weights to these types of exercises that involve your knee. So you would progress your baby squats into a deeper squat, potentially, you might stay in a baby squat zone. But you need to definitely add weights to it because that’s going to add more load to it and allow your cartilage your knee joints to get even healthier.

There’s a variety of ways to do it, let me just show you a quick way to do it, you would start with a lightweight, I’m going to grab a 10 pound weight here, you can do five pounds, even just one pound a kilograms if you prefer, if that’s the system you use. And you can go with heavier weights as well as long as you feel like you’re using your glutes. So you can hold the weight up here by your chest by your stomach area.

So people like to hold it this way, you can dangle the weight to it doesn’t matter, the fact is that you’re putting weight on your body, and your legs have to stabilize it while doing some squats. So you would start with doing that same baby squat hold.

Now that you’ve got some more weight, it should be a little bit more challenging. As you get more comfortable with that and you can consistently activate your glutes without setting off your quads, then you can go into reps, where you’re coming up and down using your glutes appropriately every single time.

Notice how I’m going out with my knees because as soon as I bring my knees in quads activate, which increases pressures in the knees, you should feel like the pressure in your knees increases like it feels tighter and heavier in your knees when your feet are forward and knees are forward like this.

But when your knees are out and feet are out, and you’re bringing your hips forward like this, your glutes should be active and there shouldn’t be much pressure in your knee joints. And you should feel like you can do squats pretty well like that without making your knee problem worse. Now as far as reps and sets, I will typically start people out doing just 10 to 20 reps with weight.

And there’s an in between phase where you kind of move into one phase as you’re coming out of another phase. So if you’re doing baby squats and phase three, you might start to add a little bit of weight. And eventually you know you’re in Phase four, when you’re doing all the exercises with weights, you’re not holding any more but you’re going up and down and doing some reps as well.

You can do a combination of doing some holds with weight as well. There isn’t a hard black and white way to progress through these phases. It’s really a version of this exercise that works best for you at the point in time that you are because it’s not flaring up your knees. If anything, that’s the only black and white thing about this is do not activate your quads.

Don’t make your knees worse, you should not feel any pain as you’re doing this in your knees. It should just feel like your muscles are working very well. Now there’s more to this than just these exercises. This is just a piece of the process that you need to go through to help your knee arthritis. And like I said earlier that near arthritis recovery program, there’s a link for that in the description below.

It is in depth it is definitely an exhaustive program for helping you with your knee arthritis. It takes you through all the stages goes to more than just the exercises. There’s stretches involved, that walks you through how to deal with flare ups because that’s important.

You’re going to be dealing with flare ups consistently for a while if you have knee arthritis because there’s going to be times when you feel better and then you do something that makes it worse and you need to know what to do to get you out of that as fast as possible.

How you walk massively influences your knee arthritis as well. We’ve got videos on that here on our channel, but in that program, we cover that in detail regarding knee arthritis. So I encourage you to go check that out. It’s in the description below.

We’ve also got all our videos about knee arthritis that are available here on YouTube, lengthen that in a playlist in the description below. Hope this video was helpful for you. If it was leave us a comment, let us know. Ask us a question. We get back to them as fast as we can. And give us a thumbs up give us a like for this video. I hope to catch you in the next video friends. Bye