Healing How-To: Knee Injuries at Her Active Life

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Healing How-To: Knee Injuries

Posted December 1, 2007 at 04:00 PM by Shannon Clark

Section: Her Fitness, Sports Medicine, Her Health, Injury & Rehab

Knee Injury If you have recently suffered an injury to your leg, then knee rehab exercise is going to be extremely important for helping you to heal and enjoy physical activity again.

It’s a good idea to start by talking to your physiotherapist, if you have been seeing one, about any knee rehab exercises that you can do. The experts usually have quite a few recommendations that will be targeted towards your specific needs, and will build the muscles and ligaments around this joint.

One great knee rehab exercise that will strengthen the outer quad muscles: sit on the floor with a rolled up towel placed under your joint. Next, flex your quad muscle until your foot comes off the floor and the entire leg is tensed. Hold this position for a few seconds and then relax. While you are not using a great amount of weight, this move will still help to strengthen the muscle, which may be slightly weaker from being used less in recent weeks or months.

A second activity is a basic squat hold position. Standing against a wall, put your arms straight out in front of you and then squat down like you are sitting in a chair. You can also do this against a wall if it will make it easier to keep your back upright. Work on holding this position up to 1 minute. Chances are when you first start you will only be able to hold it for 10-15 seconds, as it is very challenging. This is also a great move to continue doing once you are healed, because it is phenomenal for strengthening the quad and glute muscles. Once you are completely healed you can try holding a dumbbell of 5-10 pounds for more challenge.

Taking care of your injury is a big priority and needs to be done properly. If you push too hard in the beginning, you risk re-injuring, so make sure to err on the side of caution. It’s much better to make slow progress than to be taken back an entire - painful - step.