Knee Pain Relief Exercises And Streches By Doctor Jo

  

Hey everybody it's Doctor Jo, and today I'm going to show you some stretches and exercises to relieve knee pain. So let's get started. 

When you have knee pain the main muscles that you want to stretch are the ones that go around the knee joint. So that would be your calf muscles underneath here cuz they cross up on top your quad muscle because it's attached to that knee cap or patella, your hamstrings which come and cross the other side, and your IT band on the side which also crosses the knee. So since all those muscles cross the joint when they're tight, they can cause pain in the knee.

 To start off we're going to stretch the calf muscles. There's a lot of different ways to stretch them, but I like to use a stretch strap and when you're stretching your calf or down at your foot, I like to have it propped up a little bit, or if you're on a couch or a bed make sure your heel is off the edge because that will just help you stretch a little bit more. So I just kind of like to prop it up, that's just a pool noodle, just so you have some extra movement there and it's not rubbing on the floor. If you've got a stretch strap, that's great if you don't, you can use a dog leash, you can use a towel, or you can use a belt, but you want it to be something firm not one of those resistive bands.

 Place it about at the ball of your foot, and relax your foot and then pull towards you. So you're not actively moving it towards you, you're pulling with that strap towards you. So just go till you feel that stretch underneath there. You want to feel tension, you want to feel pressure, but you don't want it to be painful because you're going to hold it for 30 seconds, so if you're like this and it hurts the whole time, you're pulling too much so then take a little bit of pressure off of it because you want it to be that hurts so good not just hurt so hurt. 

So after the 30 seconds, give it a little break maybe a 10 second break, and then do a total of three of those. So just a nice pull, get that stretch in there, you might feel it underneath the knee, you might feel it right here, or you might feel it all the way through, so again holding for 30 seconds doing that three times. 

While I'm sitting here what I also think is really really good for the knee especially if it's painful is to move that knee cap or that patella around to mobilize it because a lot of times this is tight and if it's the quad muscle's tight, and just that whole joint is tight, that kneecap pushes down into the femur bone and causes a lot of pain too, so having extra movement there really helps. So with the patella mobs, what you want to do is just kind of grab that knee cap.

 Sometimes it's hard to find, people have smaller ones people have bigger ones, but try and just place your fingers all the way around it, and then just start off moving up and down. So you don't want to push downwards while you're doing it. You just want to move it this way because you don't want to push it into that joint. It might be really hard to move it at first you might feel a little bit of grinding or some crunching noises, I even have a little bit in mine and that's called crepitus.

 As long as it's not painful, that's pretty normal. This feeling for some people is kind of icky, some people have that feeling. So if you can do it that's great, if you can't that's okay, but I really think it helps loosen up that whole kneecap in that joint. You want your muscles to be completely relaxed while you're doing this. If you're if your quad's tight, you can't really move that kneecap because it pulls it tight, so make sure you're nice and relaxed. 

After you go up and down, then you're going to go side to side. I usually just place my fingers on the side and then push back and forth like that, so you can see mine moves pretty well. If you have knee pain or joint issues, it's not going to move quite that easily, but you want to do a firm push, but again not painful, so if it's painful, don't push quite as hard b.