Hi folks I'm Bob Schrupp physical therapist. Brad Heineck physical therapist. Together we are the most famous physical therapists on the internet, in our opinion of course
Five best exercises to stop knee pain quickly
What we're going to do is going to go over different scenarios here
And what you want to do quickly to help decrease the pain, right?
Precisely Bob. These are you know, field-tested things that we've discovered over the last thirty years of our existence
Yeah, as therapists' existence. So we're going to share these with you and when they work they work really well
We can't guarantee it's going to work every time but it gives you some easy options you can do at home
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Bob the first thing I want to talk about and this just happened this last week
It happened with ny mother, she gave me the idea for this she got up out of her chair
immediate pain in her knee she could hardly walk for two days after that and we were all concerned about it and
Nothing really happened, she didn't fall or anything like that. No, but it was a sharp pain so she's 82 years old
I'm assuming some arthritic changes
Something changed in there and I can actually Brad this happened to my wife
about a month ago, two months ago. She's only in their 50s and same thing this pain just started coming on
What can happen is a little piece of the cartilage can break off and
it can be like a rock in your shoe. Right. And so until it gets reabsorbed, it's really painful
She did the exact same things that your mom was doing. There you go
And this has happened to a number of people throughout the world. Yeah
So the first thing you're gonna do as a therapist is don't get excited. Do the easiest stuff first
So the first thing I did is I had her sit in the recliner
Had her put her leg up because it was swollen all the way down to her ankle
We took a cold pack and we wrapped it around there for 20 minutes and immediately she said oh does that feel good
And I knew right away that chances are this is
things are going to get better at least
partially just doing some of this and then the next thing I had her do is after the cold pack or
between putting the cold pack on three times a day
would simply do kicks or we call them archquads and just gently get it moving, support the leg here
We want to get range of motion in that joint
As long as it doesn't hurt and she was able to go about like this to start
Within a day and a half to two days she had full range of motion all the way straight, things were feeling much better
Starting to get that synovial fluid going you're smoothing out the joint, you're getting some more blood flow to it
So and then the third thing this is the one that my wife bought that is
by all means until it got so bad that she had to do it is to
keep some of the weight off of it, and a lot of times that alone will help it calm down
So what I mean by keeping some of the weight off, you're gonna have to use some type of crunch or gait aid
And if you, believe me, you know
All of our patients always fight us on this, right. I mean, I'll just say just for a while
I want you to use a cane or a crutch a lot of times a crutch is better because it seems a little less elderly
Right especially if you're a younger person in your 40s or 50s or younger
It's like you'd much rather be seen with the crutch than the cane and you know, get ready
You're going to have to tell the story of what happened. That's what my wife hated is that people
thought she was injured and it's like the knee just started hurting, right.
But she was forced to the point where she had to use a gait aid and it did help, sure
Eventually, we also got a walking stick that she could use outside
And sometimes you want to go ahead it's funny how quickly her arms got sore
We did buy some padding for it, these are a little extra padding
You keep it on the hand and underneath the arm here and it really made a big difference
Obviously that's not adjusted for Bob, but we're not going to get into that with this cuz we got other things to get to but
So that three step program right there
will help like a traumatic event that comes out randomly
Now the next situation is someone if you walk a lot run or bike and after a period of time
10 15 30 minutes of doing the activity the knee starts to hurt and it seems to be kind of a joint pain and
A lot of times on the outside of the knee, that's where you're feeling it
And it'll go away when you give it rest and you put clothes back on it
But every time you do the activity and after a certain period of time that knee pain comes back and oftentimes
It could be a tight IT band, right. This is a nice stretch, easy to do
So the IT band comes all the way down and crosses the knee, right
And so when you do a lot of
Flexion and extension of the knee like with biking and running that can get irritated on the side of the knee
So that's what we're thinking here is going on so you're going to want to go and stretch that
So you can just cross like this or you can do it here
And we're just going to simply pull this over in this direction
So you feel the stretch a lot of times you may not feel the stretch in the knee
You'll feel it up here in the hip but that's part of that muscle belly from the TFL, the muscle that connects to the
IT band and we're just going to stretch it hold it for you know
3-5 seconds and do that 3 5 to 10 times at least 3 times a day
And this is one that we had a video,
We had a friend, Brad has a friend that actually this one simple exercise alone took away his knee pain and it was disabling
Yeah, he was having trouble walking, right and now he does marathons on a regular basis. Ironman! Yeah, exactly
Number three
Pain in the front of the knee around the kneecap
Particularly, if you're going up and down stairs, or walking up and down hills
Anybody feeling moreso. Bob do you want to show? Yeah,
Can you focus it on me here? Look at those legs
Yeah, that's something you see better on a kitchen table, right?
So a lot of times if you're having pain and again going around the kneecap
You're going to want to go ahead and mobilize that kneecap because quite often what we find is that it's tight
And especially tight into this direction
Now when you do this, you really have to learn to relax your quadriceps. Yeah. It's a icky feeling
A lot of people don't like it
But by getting more, you know
Quite often what is happening is the kneecap can be too far over like this and it's rubbing
Underneath the kneecap and it's irritating it so by a stretching it here
So again, usually stretching out that way is the number one way to do it, but you can actually stretch it both ways
Right, and you can also stretch it down
you're stretching it globally as we say, and now I can also stretch it up and
Just by loosening it up, a lot of times it'll maybe reposition itself
You may have to tape it if it doesn't want to stay in place and that's beyond your skill level
You're gonna have to have a therapist do it. So you're going to do this at least three times a day
It should feel you know, like a little bit of a stretch maybe a little pain but as you do more of it
It should improve
So if you do it three times a day and spend about 2-3 minutes stretching it all 4 directions
And see what kind of response this is one that it's amazing when it works
it works really well if it doesn't work, you have nothing to lose
I think I was wrong in saying that
Usually you stretch medially because it's tight on the lateral side
So usually the one stretch you really want to do is pushing towards the other knee. Yeah, you caught yourself
And I was thinking about the next knee pain to go to but
you caught yourself, but either way it's a good idea to go to stretch it both ways and I had one lady Brad that she would actually
hurt on the stairs
And so what'd she do is she pushed the kneecap over
While she's going up the stairs and then it wouldn't hurt. So she'd literally hold it
It works so that just shows you how the magic of that sometimes you get back in that canal, right
To how it's supposed to be, alright what's next Brad?
It's probably due to arthritic changes but pain with walking
It gets worse with walking, the longer you walk and lets do with why don't you bring that?
Just check and see if you have full range of motion with knee extension, so what you're going to do
is you put both legs up
Yeah, and you're gonna put both legs up on the chair like this and you're gonna see whether or not, I'll put this one
Are they both flat? Right. Whereas one of them raised up like this
Maybe they're both raised up like this and then they both need stretching
But if you're lacking full extension, you're gonna want to try to regain that because every
Little degree that you gain will help decrease pain in that knee
Full range of motion we found that that that's almost consistently worse. So this one's the tight one
So what I'm gonna do is now I'm going to put this one down
I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to push on the knee and
This might be too high for you might have to start on a lower surface
Sometimes people start on the floor Brad, right and they just work like this and they're gonna do pressure on
pressure off pressure on
pressure off and he has his hand above the kneecap. You can actually go up above and below with both hands and
We have people do this every hour, the first day I usually have them do it once
Right, because I had one guy that just went crazy on on this the first day, he did too many reps
He was so sore the next day and he was like
mad at me, he wasn't going to come back and then we finally got him to come back and it got better, right
So be gentle initially
And you'll notice it may take a few days to get that extension to become like the other one
It may take a couple months. I mean if you're really tight, it all depends on
The arthritic condition if your hamstrings are tight as well. Problem solved. All right Bob now the next one
Do you want to do this one? Because you've got your shorts on, so if your knee
Just lack and if you don't have the full bend knee
Let's say this knee I could pull up and it bends normal
And then you test the other one and you get about to here and you can see
There's more range that's available and it kind of hurts. And so we want to see if we can regain that motion
This was the case with my wife, lacking knee flexion
So what we have her do this is quite high because I'm tall, but if you're shorter
You can put it on a lower chair
But you're gonna put your knee up and we're gonna work on flexion
now you can just even work on it this way, sure, but you see what helps is you actually take your hands and
You're gonna turn the bone here. I'm going to turn it. This is counter clockwise, right Brad?
Yeah, if you're looking down? Yeah, so I'm turning the bone and I'm holding it in place
I'm not letting go I'm turning and now I'm bending the knee at the same time
This one has worked magic with some people, not everybody but many people and you're gonna know because when you put that
rotation on there and you do it it goes farther with less pain. It feels better
Then you know you're doing the right thing. Now this is counterclockwise. If you're doing the left leg, it would be clockwise. Okay
You're going this way and going in, so when you're rotating that way and have a tendency to make your toe point inward, right
We internally rotated the tibia here is what I'm doing
Repetitions you're going to do 5 to 10 of those 5 to 10 and again you can do them and quite a few times a day
if you want, you can spread them all throughout the day, sure, and again, it should continually feel better each time
So with the towel rolled up not too thick four or five layers
You can put that right in the crux of your knee. We call it the popliteal fossa
Mufasa, so we're just going to put that up in there tight and this is gonna not get too aggressive
But then we're going to go like that, what that does it helps gap and joint a little bit and sometimes just doing that
with that support there will allow that knee to
mobilize and then you take it off and then well now you have more flexion
I'll have to have my wife try that one. I haven't had her do that one.
So these are all things you're going to try, they work well, they work really well
It doesn't work 100% of the time so follow the guidelines, it should feel better
After you do it and hopefully while you do it is oftentimes the case. Thanks for watching.