hey everyone my name is dr jeff peng this is a quick five minute stretch routine to help
provide relief for knee pain i recommend you do this routine three times a day in order to
provide increased mobility and a range of motion feel free to follow along as we go through all
the movements in real time you can also use the time stamps or find a description of the routine
down below so the first thing we're going to work on are our calf muscles so just grab a
towel and extend your leg and use the towel wrap it around your foot and pull backwards
and where you're going to feel it is in the lower leg muscles where all your calf muscles are
and our calf muscles can get really tight and because they're they're really important in
running in walking and going up and down stairs and hiking and sometimes they can get really tight
and when they get tight they tend to cause a lot of pain it can cause pain in your knees because
it can lead to pain in your ankle so it's really important in stretching this muscle up now there's
a lot of different ways to stretch out the calf muscles you can do it how i'm doing it here you
can do like in a yoga pose downward dog you can kind of have your hands against the wall and
step backwards and lean into that and that's another way to stretch out the calf muscles
really important that you just want to try to get all of these muscles stretched out in
order to provide relief okay so we're going to hold this for a total of one minute so in three
two one good the next thing we're going to work on are our hamstrings so just like a calf this
time you don't need the towel you just want to lean forwards i'm going to hold this for
a total of one minute as well and so if you can you can try to touch your toes over here
what you're really looking for is a big stretch so not in the lower leg muscles now you're really
looking at the posterior thigh over here so if you can try to touch your toes to get that big stretch
that's good otherwise if you can't what you really want to do is you want to try to touch your
chest and lean forward hinge at the hips try to touch your chest to the knees and you're
going to feel that stretch in the posterior part of your thigh now our hamstrings are
really important in flexing the knee and it's really important in providing knee stability and
stretching out the hamstrings or having tight hamstrings can really cause a lot of knee pain
it also can lead to a lot of pelvic problems and low back problems because tight hamstrings
tends to rotate the pelvis backwards and cause a posterior pelvic tilt so we're going to hold
this side for a total of one minute in three two one good so the next thing we're going to
do is we're going to work on stretching out our glutes i'm going to show you a 90 90 stretch so
90 degrees here 90 degrees here hinge forward at the hip and try to touch your chest to the ground
and where you're supposed to feel this is you're going to feel it all the way in the back of your
hip where your gluteal muscles are and the reason we're doing this
is because our glutes when they're really tight or if our hip is really tight it tends to affect our
hip rotation in our hip rotation if your hips are not aligned well that affects our knee alignment
and that can lead to knee pain so things like patellofemoral pain syndrome it can affect
things like patellar tracking disorders and so it's really important to maintain mobility and
range of motion in our hips in order to make sure that our knee is also getting better
so there's a lot of different ways to stretch out the glutes and you can check out my hip video to
learn more about the pigeon pose but we're just going to hold this for a total of one minute
so a few more seconds in three and two and one okay good the next thing we're going
to work on are our hip flexors so grab that same towel this time you're going to put it
under your affected knee and if you have a pillow a towel will work just as well
and what you want to do is this this leg 90 degrees and you want to lean forward
and you're going to feel this stretch right here in the hip flexors
and we're going to hold this for a total of one minute as well
now the more you lean forward like this you're going to feel a deeper stretch in those anterior
thigh muscles in your hip flexors the other thing you can do is you can lean backwards
like this so lean your lower body forwards lean your upper body backwards to get a bigger stretch
and again we're working on stretching out the hip in order to provide alignment in our knee in
addition part of our quadricep muscles also starts and originates in our hip and we're really trying
to stretch that out too and so this is going to be really important in terms of stretching up the hip
in order to provide relief in our knees so we're going to hold this for a total of one minute
in three two one good the next stretch we're going to work on are quadriceps so just like that hip
flexor put that cushion underneath your knee same thing like the hip flexor stretch but this time
instead of leaning forward you're going to try to grab your heel and pull it up towards your
glutes just like this now if you have problem balancing you can grab onto a chair but what
you really want to do is you want to try to pull this as close to your glutes as possible
you're going to available that stretch all the way up in the front of your thigh muscles
and our quadriceps are really the most important muscles in controlling the movement of our kneecap
it's really important in controlling the movement of our knee and it can get really tight and so
this can be a very very beneficial stretch so we're gonna hold this for a total of one minute
in three two one good all it takes is five minutes to stretch out the knee do this routine three
times a day in order to provide relief for your knee pain if you found this information useful
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i can be found on twitter @jeffreypengmd and i also write on my blog at jeffreypengmd.com