The ONLY 5 Exercises You Need for Knee Pain (Ages 60+)

Hey, if you have pain in your knees, then listen up. I have had five knee surgeries, four on my right knee, and that means I've spent a ton of time in rehab trying to figure out how to make my knees feel good again. And finally, at this point in my life, I can say that even though I've had so much damage on this knee, I can do things that most people can't. And so today what I wanted to share with you is five exercises, really the only five exercises that you need if you have knee pain, so follow along. Okay, the first exercise we're going to go through is going to help you stretch all the muscles from your hip down to the top of your knee. This is important because these muscles attach to this patellar tendon right here, and if they're tight, it compresses the knee and it reduces your overall range of motion. So start with the beginner variation, work up more towards the more advanced variations, and then go to the next exercise. Okay, for the beginner variation, we're going to focus on a simple hip flexor stretch. And I love this stretch so much because you can do this while standing in line at the bank, or the grocery store, or just about anywhere, okay? So what you're going to do is you're going to keep your hips pointed straight forward like this, and make sure that they don't tip and pivot from side to side like this, alright? One foot goes forward, one foot goes backwards, and we're going to, again, keep those hips turned forward, squeeze the glutes, and tuck the pelvis like this, so I'm trying to point my tailbone towards the ground until you feel a nice deep stretch coming through the front of the hip just like this. As you hold this position, you want to take deep belly breaths, do relaxing exhales, and slowly go deeper into the position without letting our lower back arch like this. You want to keep your pelvis tucked the entire time. You can hold this for around a minute on the right side, then make sure you do a minute on the opposite side as well, and if this feels too easy for you, then go to the intermediate level. Okay, next up, once you get good at the standing hip flexor stretch, you can do a kneeling hip flexor stretch on a chair just like this. So you're going to kneel on one knee, then you're going to swing the other leg forward, again, keeping the pelvis straight forward and the tailbone tucked like this. Now you're going to, again, drop your body forward like this as you take those big belly breaths, and do those relaxing exhales, which is going to create more range of motion, and you really want to feel that deep stretch coming through this back hip right here. Again, you can hold this position for around 60 seconds on the right side, 60 seconds on the left side, whenever you see a chair handy just like this to loosen up the hip flexors and quads and make your knee feel better, and if this starts to get too easy for you, then go to the next step. Okay, the next step is to do a kneeling hip flexor stretch, so put something soft on the ground, like a pillow, or if you need to, even multiple pillows. We don't want the pressure on your kneecap preventing you from being able to relax into this position. Now you're going to come into a lunge position, usually with about a 90 degree bend of the back leg, and then a 90 degree bend of the front leg, okay? Again, turn your hips forward, tuck your pelvis, and then allow your body to move forward until you feel a deep stretch through this hip flexor right here. This is when you're going to typically start feeling it coming down from the hip flexor and all the way into the quad muscle as well. Again, deep breathing is so important when we stretch, so big inhales, relaxing exhales as we increase the range of motion. Again, 60 seconds left, 60 seconds right. Once you feel really comfortable in this position, then you've got one more step to try out. Okay, for the final and more advanced version of this, you're going to want to put that pillow next to a couch or a chair, and what we're going to do is instead of coming into a kneeling position where our leg is flat on the ground, we're going to put our toes up on the back of the chair just like this, and then you're going to drop your knee down close to the chair, bringing your quad into a nice flexed position. Now here, we want to turn our hips forward, tuck our pelvis, and then allow our hips to come towards that front heel, and you're going to feel an incredibly deep stretch all the way through the quad muscle into the hip flexor muscle. Now in this position, we have two options. You can either come forward more every time we exhale, or we can actually get a deeper stretch in the quad by coming backwards, and then deeper stretch in the hip flexor by coming forward. This is a great one to add a little bit of movement to if that feels like it gives you more benefit. Again, about 60 seconds on the right side, 60 seconds on the left side, and if you can do this stretch, you'll have plenty of space in your quads to release your patellar tendon and allow more mobility in your knee joint. Okay, the next exercise we're going to do focuses on this group of muscles right here that runs throughout your groin on the insides of your thighs. Now this is really important because one of the most common ways that people experience knee pain is they have a pinching pain on the insides of their knees, and this can often happen because these muscles are really tight, and when we stretch them, all of a sudden, it can release a little bit of tension in this area and pretty much immediately relieve that pain. So give these stretches a shot if that's you. For the beginner variation, you're going to do this in a chair, coming to the edge of a chair just like this, bringing your legs out as far as you can, and then starting to straighten your legs. We can keep the knees bent a little bit like this if you need to for extra support. And then what we do is with a nice tall posture and a nice flat back, you start to bring your belly button between your thighs like this. When we do that, you'll feel a nice stretch on the inside of your groin. Now what I like to do here is I like to make sure I'm pushing my heels into the ground to make sure I don't fall forward. But what I want to do is hold this position, I want to squeeze my core muscles, keep my heels pushing the ground, and then as I exhale, I want to relax a little bit and see if I can bring my belly between my legs a little bit more. Now it's really important from a side angle, don't allow your spine to round forward like this. We don't want to have a rounded back because if we think we're gaining more mobility because our face is getting closer to the floor, but all we're doing is rounding through our spine, you're not really doing much for your body. So think about keeping from the tailbone to the top of your head one solid position as you bring your belly between your legs. You can hold this stretch for around 60 seconds, and if that one's too easy, then try this one. Okay, for an intermediate version, we can come down to the ground and bring our legs outside into a straddle position just like this. Now it's really important, what you want to pay attention to is whether or not your pelvis is in the correct position. So from a side angle, if I'm like this and I find myself constantly having to lean backwards, it's probably better to sit on something a little bit higher or go back to the chair straddle stretch. Because that's basically saying we don't have enough flexibility to even sit upright in this position. So we really want to make sure that our pelvis is right underneath our spine, we have a slight S-curve in the lower back and a slight S-curve in the upper back. If you can't achieve this position, again, lift the hips by sitting on something a little bit taller. Now if you can't achieve this position, what we want to do is maintain a nice flat back like this as we again begin to bring the belly between the thighs. You can use your hands out front for support like this and this time we can take that big belly breath in and when we exhale, relax and bring our body more forward, again without rounding your spine. It's not about how far you can reach your face towards the floor, it's about how far we can reach our belly towards the floor in this position. Now if you end up feeling like one side or the other is a little bit tight in this position, we can also modify this by not just doing a forward stretch, but also stretching towards the right side for 60 seconds and then stretching towards the left side for 60 seconds. So if you have a really tight groin, this three minute routine, one minute here, one minute here, one minute here, can be fantastic for loosening those up. And then when you get done, take a moment, bend your knee a couple times and notice it should feel a whole lot better on the inside of the knee. Next we want to strengthen some muscles in the lower leg called the tibialis anterior and also get better control over our quad muscles. And the reason why we want to focus on these muscles across the front side of the body is because the responsibility of these muscles is actually to decelerate and stabilize forward motion. So it's not necessarily to push your leg off the ground like this, it's to be able to slow down like this without it feeling really creaky. And so by strengthening these muscles and reactivating them, we can actually decelerate motion more effectively, which means more stability when standing, more stability when walking, more stability if we're ever able to run, and more stability during pretty much any lower body movement. So give these ones a shot and watch as your knees start to feel so much better. Okay, the beginner variation of this is really simple. All you've got to do is come to the edge of a chair just like this, straighten both legs, and what you're going to do is start by pointing your toes, and then we're going to lift your toes towards your nose until you feel these muscles right here firing, and then ideally squeezing your quads at the same time. If you need to, you can grab onto the chair for support and make sure you're not going to slide off the front of the chair, okay? So what you're going to do is lift the toes towards the nose, hold for a few seconds, and then relax, point the toes. And then lift the toes towards the nose, hold for a few seconds, relax, and point the toes. We want to do this movement for usually around a minute to 90 seconds, or until we start to feel a little bit of a pump on the front sides of the shins and also in the quad muscles. It's going to help activate those muscles, reconnect your brain to those muscles, and again, help you move better so you can feel better. And if that feels too easy for you, then we can move over to the wall, and we can do a couple different variations here. The first variation is an intermediate variation where you bring your feet about a foot or a foot and a half off the wall, and we do the same exact movement. This time, we're going to lift the toes towards the nose, squeeze really tight, and that's going to involve more muscular tension in the tibialis anterior, and then also, remember, squeeze the quads as you bring the toes up. Then point them back down, and repeat just like this. See if you can do this one for at least 60 to 90 seconds, or until you feel a pump in these muscles right here again. You can do this one pretty frequently, almost every day, because it's going to strengthen and activate those muscles and make your knees feel a whole lot better. Oh, and if that starts to get too easy, there's one more variation I want to show you. You can literally place one foot in front of you, and you can either place the other foot across the ankle, or just dangle it out front like this, and we can do a single leg version of the tib curls just like this. It's going to be a whole lot harder than the last one, so make sure you get strong at the two-footed variation first before transitioning to one foot. Okay, now that we've focused on your lower leg and kind of dipped our toes in the water of activating our quads, we're going to take the activation of the quads to the next level, because your ability to fully flex and extend your knee via your quad muscle is an important thing that you need to be able to build and maintain if you've been injured in your knees. So I'm going to show you how to do it with a chair, and then we'll work down to a harder variation on the floor. Okay, to perform this movement, you're going to want to make sure you have a nice, soft surface. So if you can kneel on a chair, that's great. If you can't, you can add a pillow just like this, and kneel on that pillow. We've had people even have to add two or three pillows until the surface was soft enough where it felt comfortable to kneel on your kneecap. So make sure you're not creating discomfort by kneeling on your kneecap, and if you have to, you can even put some of the weight on your hand and on your back leg as well, which will minimize the pressure you're putting on your kneecap. But in this position, what we want to do is we want to let our ankle hang off the edge of a chair just like this, okay? And the first thing we want to do is we want to lift our toes towards our nose, just like we did on the tip curls, and this time we're going to push the ankle down into the chair, okay? Now this leg can come out to the outside at about a 45-degree angle, all the way to a 90-degree angle, just somewhere kind of out to the side like this, okay? Now maintain pushing that ankle down into the ground, and then we want to finish extending the hips by squeezing this back glute. So I'm squeezing the glute here and pushing the ankle down there, all right? Now pay really close attention. Keeping those muscles tight, slowly bring your butt towards your heel while maintaining that push. Only go as far as you can. And if that's the full range of motion for you, that's fine. And then push the ankle down, squeeze the glute, and extend the hips. And you'll notice my foot's even starting to shake right here. This is a quad activation drill that works for anybody, regardless of how strong you are, because the harder you push your ankle down, the more it involves your quad muscles, all right? Over time, you can slowly work bigger and bigger ranges of motion until you're able to get your butt much closer down to your heel. So what's great about this is we're working on strengthening the quad through its full range of motion, which is an area where most people don't work, and it ends up causing the inability to do things like squats or going up and down stairs. So working on this every day is really important because it's going to help reactivate those muscles, reconnect your mind to your quad muscles, which is going to make your knee feel so much better. Sixty seconds a day will do wonders for knee pain. And if you don't have a chair that feels like the right fit for you, you can always put your cushion on the ground and you can do the same movement just like this while being on the ground. Okay, so these first four exercises were really about isolating specific problems that often contribute to knee tightness and knee pain. So we stretched all the quad muscles and the hip flexors to create more space so the knee could glide more smoothly. We stretched the groin muscles right here, which again can create space, usually on that medial side of the knee, which is an area where a lot of people are in pain. Then we activated the tibs and started activating the quads, and then we actually activated your quad muscles using one of my favorite moves that activates your quads through its full range of motion. So now we want to put this all together into one movement that you can use to practice strengthening your legs, strengthening your knees, and making them so strong that you can go back to doing the things you want to do again pain-free. That move is called the sit-to-stand, and I'm going to teach you a few variations so you can have the right variation for your body and your particular level as of right now. If you're a complete beginner, my favorite variation to teach is the sit-to-stand in reverse while using your arms for support. So let's make sure you get perfect form doing this movement so you don't end up hurting yourself any further. Start with your feet slightly outside of hip width and turn your toes slightly outward. This is important because it creates space for us to come down between our heels. Next, as you descend down, make sure that you're pushing your knees out and making sure your knees are pointed the same direction as your toes. This could be one of the most important things for people with knee pain, because if your knee is collapsing inward like this, you're going to have knee pain and you're going to wear out your knee joint in a way that doesn't feel good in the long run. So make sure the knee is pointed the same direction as the toes. So back in the standing position, I'm going to shift the weight to the heels, push the knees out, and I'm going to start to descend towards the chair by pushing my butt backwards like this. Once I can, I place my hands on my thighs or my knees, and I use them for support while again keeping the weight on the heels. I tap my butt down to the chair, then I reverse the motion by bringing my belly forward between the thighs, remember stretching the groin out, and then pressing into the heels and focusing on hip extension rather than knee extension, because so many people when they stand up from a chair, they focus on keeping their torso upright and bringing their knees forward. I'm just going to put a lot more pressure on your knees than is necessary. So remember, everything moves backwards, heels, butt backwards, hands on the knees, and then everything moves forward. We're still pressing through the heels, but the hips and everything move forward just like this. If for some reason that still causes knee pain, then you can reduce the range of motion in your sit-to-stand by using pillows to make sure that you're doing a higher surface than the regular chair. So it might look like this, I come down, I tap my butt to that pillow, and I stand back up. And don't be afraid to do this in the smallest range of motion that feels 100% comfortable. We've literally had people start at tiny sit-to-stands like this, and eventually be able to do full range of motion sit-to-stands in a way that felt good on their bodies. So start where it feels good, and then work up from there. If supportive sit-to-stands start to feel good, and you can do at least 10 of them with perfect form and no knee pain, then we can transition you to doing simple sit-to-stands. So this time, arms come out forward for counterbalance, we press the weight into the heels, the belly comes between the thighs, the knees are going the same direction as the toes, and we focus on hip extension rather than knee extension again. Inhaling down, exhaling up, just like this, and moving slow and controlled because it's so important to focus on movement, because when you move better, you feel better. Now if you can do 10 of these with perfect form and no knee pain, let's try the next one. And for the final variation I'm going to teach you today, we can make this even more challenging by taking a step away from the chair and increasing your range of motion. So everything is exactly the same, but instead of us stopping when our butt hits the chair, we can start to go deeper and deeper and deeper, with the goal of being able to relax in the bottom position of a squat in a way that actually feels good on your knees, hips, and lower back, and the ability to stand up from it again. If you do these five exercises every single day, you're going to stretch and strengthen all the muscles around your knee joint in a way that makes your knees feel good again. So give them a shot, let us know in the comments, how does your body feel after trying these five exercises? And while these five exercises are great, if you want us to build you a customized 10 minute routine that you can do from home with the right variation of these movements and stretches and other ones that will help support your knee and make it feel good again, that's exactly what we do at WeShape, and you can try it for free by clicking the link below.