Knee health is something that we should all care about. Why? Because our knees are one of our most crucial joints. Our knees help us move, stabilize, and perform weight-bearing activities. And if we take this away—i.e., we don’t look after our knees, causing us pain, running the risk of potential injury, and losing some of our ability to move optimally—that’s going to be a huge blow to our everyday life and physical performance.
In our guide below, we’ll detail how you can keep your knee health strong with a powerful strength-based workout that you can do, hitting muscles running above and below these joints for increased stability and mobility. We’ll then explore some other things to note, like including that all-important warm-up before your workouts and some other key indicators above some safe dosage ideas to help you avoid the dreaded too much, too soon. Finally, we’ll talk about how those readers amongst us who may have lost the “battle” against their knee issues can begin a rehabilitation process to get back into a state of readiness for life and related re-integration activities that you can start to explore.
Understanding Knee Health
The importance of knee joint health can't be overstated—our knees are vital to movement and much of our physical daily lives. The knee joint itself is made up of a connection between the femur and tibia, the patella, or "kneecap," and a complex series of ligaments, tendons, and cartilage that allow for a range of movement that few other joints can pull off.
A variety of conditions may affect the strength and stability of your knee, giving rise (or as a direct result of) one or more injuries. Osteoarthritis, various ligamentous derailments (ACL and PCL tears, e.g.) can spell disaster, as can tendonitis of the various tendons in the joint. Though many "knee conditions" are general wear-and-tear-related or have origins in injury/overuse, some are also related to your bone and muscle health.
Strengthening and Flexibility for Healthy Knees
If you think about the knee as a joint, it is easy to see how important the muscles around the knee might be for joint stability and injury prevention. These large and powerful muscles, the quadriceps, hamstrings, and calves, can easily be targeted with effective exercises like squats and lunges to provide essential support for the heavy work of the knee joint. This work is not just to increase muscle bulk but to develop all the components of "strength": power (a measure of strength and speed), endurance, balance, and agility (speed of "fine" movement).
Rehabilitation and Recovery
Rehabilitation or knee injuries usually follow a structured approach that includes rest, ice, compression, and elevation (RICE) at first, and then physical therapy. Physical therapy helps restore knee function because the movements involved build strength in the muscles surrounding the knee, improve flexibility, and develop greater overall stability. The exercise program can be adapted to an individual’s specific needs and helps the patient regain the full range of motion that a healthy and uninjured knee should have. The physical therapy program is not finished until the patient has recovered enough to return to what he or she considers to be "normal".
To keep your knees healthy, you need to get regular exercise, you need to stay at or below your ideal body weight as that takes the load off your knees—and you have to "listen" to your body so that it can tell you when it is under too much strain.