♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Hi five.
- Oh.
(laughs)
- Hi folks.
I'm Bob Schrupp, Physical Therapist
- Brad Heineck, Physical Therapist
- And we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- (mumbles) And of course, Bob.
- Today, we're gonna talk about top five ways
to correct knock knees with exercise and et cetera.
- Et cetera, so there's more.
- There's more, yeah.
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All right, when you have knock knees,
it's also called genu valgus.
- Right.
- So basically, I mean I don't know that I need
to demonstrate it but basically your knees
are going in like this.
- Right, sometimes they'll bump actually
when you walk through.
- And you know, actually, little children actually
a lot of times have that naturally and they grow
out of it.
It's very common. They used to tell these little kids
to ride a trike. That would help get them out of it,
but they don't need to.
It happens on their own.
- Right. They got that figured out now.
- So generally when you have knock knees,
the problem usually isn't at the knee.
The problem is usually at the hip or the ankle and the foot.
- Sure.
- So that's where you want to look.
Now, there can be genetic components that you can't change.
Like if your hip, for example, instead of a greater angle
here it has a lesser angle between the ball--
- Is that the Q-angle?
- That's not the Q-angle. The Q-angle is at the knee.
- Okay, different angle.
Sorry--
- Yeah, it's called Coxa Vara. And if this angle between
the ball and the femur here is smaller,
that's gonna bring this bone in and there's no way
you can get around it then.
You're gonna have knock knees.
- Right.
- So unless you have surgery, you're gonna
have that.
And now, well let's go to the things
you can correct.
- Okay.
- Okay, so let's first talk about if your hip tends
to internally rotate.
- Or rotate inwards.
- Yep. Watch what that does to the knee.
So here I'm straight like it should be.
I internally rotate this bone
and that immediately puts more of an angle here.
The knock knee angle there.
So that's one thing we're gonna look at
on correcting on you.
Are your hips kind of tight, and they're putting you
into internal rotation.
- Sure.
- And that's causing the knock knees.
- So we need some stretches to loosen the muscles up here
and then some--
- And the capsule.
- Strengthening exercises to tighten
the opposite muscles up.
- Perfect.
- Sure.
- To keep it that way.
All right, so that's what we're gonna
do with the hip.
We'll go over that in a minute,
those exercises to help stop the hip from turning in.
We're gonna try to get the hip to come out a little bit.
- Sure.
- At the foot, if you're flat-foot, you know plantar...
(mumbles) plantis. Right?
What's the name of it, the medical term?
Oh, I'm putting him on the spot.
- Pronated.
- Pronated, yeah (laughing). There we go.
I was thinking about a more fancier way to say it.
If you have flat feet basically, watch what that does
to the tibia here.
So the foot flattens out and the tibia turns in.
And that causes the angle to be created there.
Again, hip or foot. So we're gonna talk about
what to do down there in case you have problems there.
But let's talk about the hip first.
- All right--
- So trying to get the hip into external rotation.
A simple way to do this is, even you can
do it while you're seated, is you're just gonna go ahead
and cross your legs like this.
And you're gonna push down.
And this is working on external rotation.
It's nice, you can do it throughout the day.
You can just do pressure on, pressure off, pressure on.
- The old figure four stretch, they call it.
- And you can do it a number of times throughout the day.
You know you can do it while you're working even.
- And it's just a good general stretch to do.
- It's a good stretch to do anyway--
- Even if you're not knock kneed.
- He's absolutely right.
The other one you can do is...
If you want to get both of them at the same time.
You can do what we call the butterfly stretch.
So gonna get in this position, just kind of a lotus
position, too, Brad?
I don't know, you're into martial arts and stuff,
but anyway, so it's like a butterfly,
it's flying here, right?
I'm really not doing well with this today, am I?
- No, it looks good, Bob. You look like you're having fun.
- Yeah, yeah!
- But no, that's a good stretch for those hip muscles--
- The external rotators.
Okay, then we want to go ahead and do a strengthening
exercise for the external rotators.
And the best one to do for that is the clamshell.
So real easy to do.
You're just gonna lay on your side
and you're gonna put your ankles together.
And you're gonna work your hip like this.
Now, so I'm bringing it up.
Knees are coming together, but the feet
are staying contacted together.
Now if you wanna make it harder, right,
Brad's bringing out the band already.
You can make it harder with band--
- Here, lift that leg up--
- But to be honest, most of you, this is gonna
be hard enough for you to start off with.
- Yeah.
- I mean, these are small muscles, a lot of them,
and then get fatigued very rapidly.
- Sure.
But they do make nice loop straps that actually
work really well.
- Right .
- Liz, you have an exercise program that use that.
You guys do these don't ya?
Yeah, do they say that it's good for knock knees?
They probably don't.
- They probably don't.
- Well you can bring it up in the next (mumbles).
- You can actually take a weight, Brad,
just a hand weight, and put it right here, too.
I mean that will do the job, too.
- Here, try it. All right. Give it a go.
- You put it right along your thigh like this,
and you're gonna go ahead.
And that actually is working.
You'd like it wouldn't but it does.
So all right, we gave you some different ways for you
to go ahead and stretch the hip into external rotation.
And strengthen the hip into external rotation.
Now we're going down to the feet.
You got flat feet.
We do have a video on exercises you can do,
but to me it takes a lot of work to try
to correct flat feet.
And to me, the best thing is probably just to go ahead
and wear an arch support.
I mean, in my mind.
- Or change your shoe style to a shoe that's made
for that which would be called a motion control shoe.
In any shoe store that's worth their two cents,
you should be able to ask them about a motion control shoe
and they'll take you right to them.
- Yeah, I think you're referring basically to athletic
shoes, right Brad?
- Yeah, walking or running.
- Yeah, I don't think they have,
walking or running, but I don't think
they have those in dress shoes, do they?
- Well, that's a very good question.
- I don't know.
- That's a good question.
Yeah, you may have to put a insert for that.
- So that's going to correct your flat feet
and that's gonna help the knock knees then.
Also, what Brad and I have seen a lot with
a lot of patients.
Because your flat foot, the inside of your
shoe starts to wear out, the bottom.
- Right.
- And that makes your feet even
go more into pronated position.
And, eventually what happens is you really start
wearing, you know, getting knock kneed.
- And a lot of people aren't even aware of that--
- They aren't.
- And then you take the shoe and you tip
it over and they can see the one side only
is wore off and it's like...
- Right, if you look at the bottom of your shoe
you can tell right away, all the wears that
are occurring on the inside.
It's time to change out the shoe, too.
You know, and as a bonus, you athletes out there.
You really want to get into the habit of, like volleyball
players and stuff like that,
and basketball players, of landing with your feet
lined up like this and not landing like this.
Injuries are so much more predominant in people
who are landing like this. ACL injuries.
- Sure.
- And I see this with a lot of volleyball players.
They go like this.
And you gotta learn to land like this.
You know, get yourself in this position.
- You need to train that outside the game.
Because you're not going to think about
it obviously while you're playing.
So you're gonna do some jumping exercises,
and that's all you do is focus on that.
You need to do a lot so it becomes muscle memory
so-to-speak.
- Yeah, like if you're doing squats.
If you're doing squats and your knees are going in,
it's because you're doing too much weight
and the quads aren't able to hold you.
So you really want to lessen up the weight
and get to the point where you have perfect form.
And then when you have perfect form, then you can add
to the weight and still not go into knock knees.
- While maintaining it.
- Nice to have a partner so they can--
- Yeah, keep an eye on you and make sure.
It's always good to lift with a partner anyway,
cause they keep you motivated, right Brad?
- Right, exactly Bob.
- All right, so get rid of those knock knees
with the exercises and remember Brad and I can fix
just about anything--
- Except for--
- A broken heart, but we're working on it.
- Yes, we are Bob.
- Day and night.
- Yep, I'm gonna get another book on it, I'm thinking.
- I bet you got a whole library, don't you Brad?
(laughing)
All right, thanks for watching.
(music chimes)