hey everybody it's Doctor Jo, and today I'm gonna show you my top seven
treatments for knee pain. so let's get started.
so as you can see, I'm wearing a knee support sleeve, but I'm gonna talk
about that a little bit later. so I'm gonna go ahead and take this off and
start with some of the treatments. so the first thing is going to be patella mobs
or kneecap mobs, and the reason why this is an important treatment is because the
kneecap is attached to the quad tendon, and the patellar tendon, and then the
quad muscle up top. and so when these are really tight, it puts a lot of pressure
and tension on that kneecap pushing it down into the joint. so the more you can
have your kneecap moving around, the less pressure and pain in your knee. so this
is one of the things where some people really hate this movement. it kind of
freaks them out a little bit, so it's, you can do it yourself, but you need to be
completely relaxed. so if you need somebody else to do it for you, that's
fine. so just kind of take your fingers, find your kneecap, and sometimes it's in
a different spot than where mine is depending on just your makeup of your
body, but put your fingers on each side and then you're just gonna push side to
side. so you can see that my kneecap is moving pretty well because I don't
really have any knee issues, but if you're having a lot of pain or if you
have an injury in there it might not move very much. but what you want to do
is make sure you're not pushing down while you're going to side to the side.
you're just really going side to side because if you're pushing down, you're
just grinding that kneecap into that joint. and you can push pretty hard
unless you have a specific injury like a kneecap dislocation that would be
something where you wouldn't want to continue to push on it. but if you have
just general knee pain, you can push pretty hard to get this thing moving. so
just go side to side for a little bit, and then you can take your thumbs and
fingers and then go up and dow.n but same thing, I'm doing this motion. I'm not
scooping it because that's gonna push that kneecap down into that joint. so
again up and down, side to side. you can kind of switch back and forth and just
do this for a couple minutes. the first time you do it you might want to just do
it for 30 seconds, but if it's painful painful you don't want to do it. but if
it's uncomfortable, go ahead and see if you
get it moving because a lot of times then you start moving it and then it
starts going really really mobile and that's good. that's what you want. you
want that kneecap to kind of be floating on top so they're not right in that groove
of the femur bone there. so once you get that all kind of loosened up and stretch
out, then you can go into some isometric type type of exercises. so the next thing
we're gonna go into is a quad set. quad sets are really nice because if you have
a lot of knee pain, this is kind of the first step to exercising where you're
not making big movements that might be painful, but you're starting to activate
those muscles again. and this quad muscle is really important in our knee movement
and our kneecap movement, so you really want to get it going. and a lot of times
if you have a pain or injury in your knee, the quads kind of just don't fire
anymore. I like to use a little target underneath my knee. you can use a little
foam roll like this, this is just a pool noodle, but you can also just roll up a
towel. you can do it with your knee completely straight, but I feel like when
you have a target, it works a little bit better. you don't want it to be really
high because you want your knee to be close to straight, but it doesn't have to
be straight. and so all you're gonna do is you're going to contract, or tighten
up that quad muscle to try and push that knee down into the roll. the key is not
to lift your heel. if you're going up like this, that's a different exercise
and that's actively moving it. so you want to just squeeze it down and you can
see here where my muscles activate. you want to activate that muscle. you want to
try and squish whatever is underneath. hold it for about three to five seconds
and then relax. so again if you have an injury or if you have some pain, you
might be squeezing and you might just get a little tremble in that quad. you
might not get a full contraction like that ,and that's okay. this is what we're
working up to, but eventually you want to be able to see that muscle contracting.
so again holding it for three to five seconds. maybe do ten reps. it really
depends on what your injury is, how far out you are from your injury, so I can't
give you exact numbers. I would just say in general start with ten, one to two
sets of ten, a couple times a day, and then you can kind of progress your way
up from there. so then the next one is a hamstring set. and
that's another isometric movement. so with the hamstring set, this time you're
trying to activate the hamstring muscles underneath because those cross the
whole joint as well. so the quad kind of crosses it by being connected to the
patella, but the hamstrings actually cross the
whole knee joint. so you want to get those activated too. you want to get
those moving again, and doing it isometrically is a great way to kind of
relax it. so all you're gonna do is bend it up. and so what I'm doing now is I'm
pushing that heel down into the floor. and so you can you should be able to see
my my hamstrings right there activating a little bit. so it's the same thing,
you're just pushing down as far as you comfortably can, holding it for about
three to five seconds, and then relaxing. so you're pushing just to right before
pain. if it's a lot of pain while you're pushing, push a little bit less or maybe
you're not quite ready for that. again and so same thing to start off with
maybe about ten, you can progress from there. so then the next thing is using a
knee support sleeve. and the folks at sleeve star sent me their knee support
sleeve. and so this one is really cool. this there's several reasons why I like
this sleeve, and one of them in particular is it's made with a very
breathable material. a lot of these sleeves are made with neoprene, and
neoprene just if you've ever worn sleeve like that, it doesn't whisk away the when
you like sweat on your knee, and this so it gets kind of really hot in there, and
this is just very breathable. it's anti odor so then when you're using it, it
just kind of whisk away the sweat and some of your stinkiness. and so it's
really nice in that fact because it's very breathable. and that's really
important to me because a lot of times I have a little bit of skin sensitivity,
and this type of material always seems to work better for my skin. but it also
has I'm going to flip it over and you can see where it has here to hold it in
place. so it's anti slip. so it's got that that silicon gel to hold it in place, and
here is just got it's a little bit tighter, so you can see here that it
holds it better down here. so this prevents it from sliding down your leg
which is also really nice. knee supports in general
to me are great they're not going to stabilize. it's not a brace, it's not
going to protect your knee from you know going one side or the other, but what it
does is it has that compression. and what compression does is it's a great thing
because I call it a hug. it's almost like a hug when you feel you know you give
somebody a big bear hug, and it just feels really good. it helps increase that
circulation to the area, and that's really important in a lot of different
ways. one it helps prevent the swelling. so if your knee swells up a little bit,
you have this compression it pushes that swelling out of there. and then it helps
keep whatever injury in there not having all that swelling and irritation that
causes continued pain. the compression also helps keep the area warm. so again
that warmth if you're exercising it helps loosen up those muscles around the
knee joint. so it's really nice to kind of have that warmth in there too. and it
does give support, you know it's not a stability or an instability stopper, but
it does give a support where it just kind of holds everything together. so
again if your kneecap is is a little bit painful because maybe it's pushing on
that tendon or something, this kind of supports it in place just to take some
of that pressure off of it. so I really do like the knee sleeves. I especially
like this one just because it has some extra benefits to it, but what I do like
about it is you can wear it while you're exercising and stretching and things
like this. this is something that sometimes if you're in that acute phase
where you just have your injury, you can wear it all day, but I personally
wouldn't long-term right all day. wear it when you need the protection. if you know
you're gonna be doing, you know maybe going out for a jog or doing some
intense exercises, but just for every day use it's probably not something you want
to do. if you're in a therapy session or rehab sessions, sometimes you want to
take it off as well because you really want those muscles to do the work. but in
general this is really just a support and I really like it, and you can see
that it just kind of stays in place. I can you know, bend it and move it and
it's not sliding around, but it's not cutting off my circulation either. and so
it feels really really good. if I went off and did something, I probably
wouldn't even notice that it was there because it's not constricting it's just
enough for that nice little hug. so for the rest of the
stretches we're just going to move on into a hamstring stretch. so like I said
you definitely can wear this while you're exercising, and the great part
about it is it's not just going to slip down and fall off your leg. so going into
a hamstring / calf stretch, you can do a combination with this stretch just to
save time. if you need it, if you're doing a calf stretch as well, try and bring the
strap a little bit up to the ball of your foot. if you don't have a strap like
this, you can use a dog leash. you can use a belt, but something that you can make a
loop with usually works best. so you're just going to kind of lie down. so you
can just relax and you're going to use the strap to bring up your leg into a
stretch. and so it's going to stretch your hamstrings, and if you pull your
foot, that's going to stretch out your calves as well. so that's what ends up
getting the double stretch. so see how I'm kind of pulling down, and so I'm
getting the stretch of my calf here. and as I come up higher, I'm getting the
hamstring stretch there as well. so you might only be able to come to here.
that's fine. you know the higher you go the better, but if your knee starts
bending, then you're not getting a stretch anymore. so if your knees start
bending, and you're here, try and bring it back down until you can get that
straight because otherwise you're not stretching those hamstrings if you're
bending your knee. so holding there for about 30 seconds. come on back down and
then you can do that three times. I like to leave my knee up over here for this
one just because it takes some pressure off of the back, but you don't have to.
some people like to leave it down and that's fine as well because the next one
that we're going into is an IT band stretch. and so for this one you probably
want to bring that leg down just a little bit or all the way down because
you're going to kind of come back up into that hamstring stretch, keeping that
leg straight, and then you're gonna bring it across your body. and you should feel
it anywhere from your knee up to your hip because that IT band or the TfL
starts up here at your hip, and then comes down and it passes your knee also,
so it's really just as important to have that one stretched out as well. and a lot
of times we forget about that IT band but it caused a lot of problems if it's
really tight. so again try not to just bring your whole body over, but just that
leg. so you're getting that nice stretch in
there and again 30 seconds doing three on each side.
and so the last one is going to be a quad stretch. and so again the quad is
really important because if it's tight it is putting pressure on that knee cap, and
then it's pushing it down in that joint causing a lot of pain. so you can do this
in sidelying, or you can do it on your tummy. sometimes I like it better
on my stomach because then it kind of supports my thigh because you want that
thigh to be straight, but you can also do it on your side. I'm gonna do it on my
side right now just to kind of show you, but I'm gonna do my top leg just so I
can look at you while I'm doing it. but normally if it was this leg, I'd want it
to be on top. when you're doing it on the side you want to make sure this part is
straight down. if I'm up like this and I'm stretching my leg like this, and I'm
bringing it up, I'm not really stretching my quad. so I want to even bring it back
maybe just a little bit. and then try and pull that knee towards my bottom. now I'm
propped up. I wouldn't prop up I'm just kind of
talking to you, but I would lay down and then just pull like that. so you can see
that my hip's straight, but for people who are tight, again if you're okay rolling
over onto your stomach you might want to do it that way because then you don't
have to worry about focusing on your hip because it's down on the floor and
there's no problem. you can also do the all these stretches and exercises in
your bed if you have a hard time getting on the floor. you don't have to do it on
the floor. you can do it on bed, you can do it on a couch, it might be a little
bit more squishy, but that's fine. I don't want to get on the floor and then not be
able to get back up off the floor. so again holding this for 30 seconds,
doing that three times. and so if you're having any pain on both sides, do it on
both sides. if not that's okay too. so there you have it. those were my top
seven treatments for knee pain. if you're interested in purchasing this sleeve
stars knee support sleeve, make sure and click on the link up there. and don't
forget to subscribe by clicking down there. and remember, be safe, have fun,
and I hope you feel better soon.