Hey everybody it's Doctor Jo, and today I'm going to show you some isometric
exercises for the hips and the knees, and the folks at Activ5 sent me a really
cool tool to help you track your progress. So let's get started.
Some patients ask me how hard do I need to
push, or how do I know how hard I'm pushing with isometric exercises because
isometric exercises are when you are pushing, you're activating those muscles,
but you're not actually moving the muscles, so for instance if I wanted to
do my leg out this way, I would be pushing into something where I'm
activating that muscle, but not making that movement, and the reason these are
important is because a lot of times right after an injury or especially
after surgeries, you're not allowed to do certain movements, but this is a great
way to start strengthening those muscles before you can do those movements that
might be precautions ,so a great way to know how much you're pushing is to use
specific tools. This is called the Activ5, and it's a really neat piece of
equipment because what it does is you download the app on your phone, and it
will show you how much pressure you're putting on this, so you basically put it
wherever you're pushing into and it will let you know, and the app has some really
cool games you can do with it, and what you do is you put your max rep in there
and then it will give you a line you have to follow, so you push harder and
less which is really cool so what I'm going to do is just show you some of the
isometric exercises and use this throughout so you can see how to use it.
To start off, we're going to strengthen the quad and this is a simple quad set,
if you've ever had physical therapy for anything in your leg you probably know
what a quad set is. I like having a little roll or something underneath the
knee to give you something to push into. You don't have to you can push on the
ground, but I feel like this helps you out just a little bit, so you can roll up
a towel, you can use a little noodle anything like that, but what I would do
then is just place this right under your knee on that towel or roll, so what you
want to do is this quad muscle you want to activate that muscle squeeze it so
you're trying to push that knee down into the
floor, so just squeeze, you should see that muscle activate a little bit. If
you've had an injury or surgery, you might not get a whole lot of contraction
to start off with, but you're trying to push that knee down as hard as you
comfortably can, hold that for about three to five seconds while you do it so
you're really getting that muscle working, and then relaxing just start off
with about ten of these, and if you're using the Activ5, you can follow
along on your phone, and so you can push push a little bit harder relax a little
bit just to get different activations of that muscle. The next one is going to be
a hamstring set, and the way to do that pretty easily is bend your knee up and
put your heel down on the floor, so again I would just place my heel on the Activ5
and then you're pushing down activating those hamstrings underneath.
So again you want to push as hard as you comfortably can for about three to five
seconds, and then relax, and then what's really neat about this is you'll be able
to track your progress and see how much you're getting stronger, so sometimes
you're like I don't know I feel like I'm pushing the same, but then you can
actually have visual results to see that you're getting stronger and pushing a
little bit harder, so again holding for three to five seconds and then relaxing.
The next one is going to be to work the outer side going into hip adduction,
abduction, sorry A B abduction, going out, and that's working those outer muscles
those glute muscles. So a great way to do that is just take a belt or a strap and
put it just above your knees on the thigh area here, put your feet flat you
can lie down especially if you've had a hip surgery you might not want to break
those precautions, so if you want to lie all the way down that's that's fine to
do as well, but again you can take this and just place it on the side here and
then you're pushing out into the belt like you're opening up like a butterfly,
so again three to five seconds just starting off with ten times doing that
and you should feel those muscles on the outside,
that a b duction activation, and then after you get 10 of those you're just
going to go into adduction. Adduction which is squeezing in, so that's those
inner thighs, the adductors, the groin area ,and then so same thing, sometimes I
say put a ball or a pillow in between, but you can just hold your hand and
the Activ5 and then you're squeezing in. So same thing just three to
five seconds, and then relaxing and then doing starting off ten times, but
eventually you can kind of work your way up, but making sure that none of these
hurt, they shouldn't be painful especially if you've had that surgery of
some sort in your knees, or in your hips, you want to make sure that you're doing
a comfortable push, but you're strengthening those muscles. So those are
your isometric exercises for the hips and the knees. If you'd like to purchase
the Activ5, click up here, and don't forget to subscribe to our channel by
clicking here. So remember, be safe, have fun, and I hope you feel better soon.