Let’s say you’re working out and it’s leg day. Odds are, you have to do squats. So you’re trying to figure out how to do squats without feeling any type of knee pain. Here are some exercises for knee pain that might help you out! And it doesn’t matter where the pain is! If it’s back of the knee pain, inside of the knee pain, etc, this will help avoid that altogether!
Exercises for Knee Pain
There’s no doubt that squatting can hurt your joints. Whether that be your low back or your knee, if you’re not doing the squats right, or preparing before-hand, you’re probably experiencing some of that pain first hand.
Luckily, there lots of exercises for knee pain. And today, I’m going to walk you through the simple 5 step process that I love doing. This will help you avoid any knee pain when it comes to squatting!
The Exercises:
1. Warm up your legs first
By warming up your legs, all that is needed is to simply get on some kind of low impact cardio machine.
Something that will start getting your leg muscles working. Machines such as the bicycle, stair master, elliptical, or even walking on an incline are great.
Do one for about 5 minutes and it will drastically improve how loose and flexible your legs feel.
2. Roll out your leg muscles
Foam rolling is huge when it comes to any muscle group, but is especially important for legs, seeing as how it’s the largest muscle group in the body and we’re walking around on them all day.
Foam rolling for 5-10 minutes will help to increase your circulation, increase flexibility/mobility and prep your muscles for the workout that’s about to go down.
3. Open up your hips
Opening up your hips is especially important for those that are sitting at a desk all day.
Naturally, as we sit, the muscles in and around our hips are becoming increasingly tighter and less mobile. This is one of the main reasons why people feel they can not go very deep in their squat.
By doing a couple exercises, such as internal and external hip rotations, the prayer squat and the frog, you can relieve some of the tightness in your hips allowing for a further range of motion and better stimulation of the correct muscle groups.
4. Pre-stimulate your glutes
Activating your glute muscle before start any leg workout is one of the most overlooked aspects of leg training. Also, it is one of my favorite exercises for knee pain EVER.
Typically, people find it much easier to work their quad muscles rather than they hamstrings and glutes. This is due to the fact that they’re not spending any time creating that mind/muscle connection.
Grabbing a band and putting it around your knees and doing some side step squats or some hip abductors until you feel a contraction in your booty, can go a long way in preventing knee or back pain with squats because you’ll be using the right muscles to push that weight.
5. Warm up with light weight
Warming up with lighter weight than normal takes a lot of patience but can make all the difference in your very first session trying it.
Doing this will allow your joints to secrete synovial fluid into the joint cavity of your knees. This helps to lubricate the articulating joints and reduce friction while squatting.
Simply doing two sets of 15 reps with super light weight (maybe even just body weight) can help increase that lubrication and make a huge difference in your legs feel when loading up on weight.
So try these easy exercises for knee pain before your next squat session and see if it helps! I grew up a volleyball player. So when it comes to figuring out how to do squats without knee pain, this has been my go-to for years. This helps me avoid knee pain! Let me know your story down below!