Torn Meniscus Exercises To Avoid
Meniscus tears are common in contact sports such as football, basketball and volleyball. Doctors will usually remind patients who have torn meniscus that some exercises can put too much pressure on your knees. Any activities that can cause pain or mechanical symptoms for your knees such as catching, clicking, or locking should be stopped immediately. Patients should avoid putting weight on their knees as much as possible.
Other than contact sports, the following exercises are more likely to cause re-injury, which should also be avoided for patients with meniscus tear:
- Deep squatting
- Climbing
- Lunging
In order to minimize symptoms during exercise, please do not perform any high-impact sports as discussed above or other activities that include repetitive jumping, squatting and twisting. Learn how to prevent torn meniscus is also the key to reduce your risks of getting accidental meniscus injury.
Choose Softer Walking Surfaces
Walking on natural surfaces is easier on the joints. Although sometimes uneven, natural surfaces provide more balanced exercise, cushioning the joints when needed, and strengthening your joints in all planes of motion. For even surfaces, choose a cinder track or asphalt rather than concrete.*
*NOTE: mall flooring and many commercial spaces are made of primarily concrete.
Walking Rebuilds Joints And Strengthens Your Legs
If your pain is due to a condition like arthritis, the cartilage in your knee can become damaged and worn.
The end result is pain, stiffness, and problems with mobility.
Walking can help rebuild the joint.
The cartilage in your knee is like a sponge, and it gets nutrients from the compression and decompression of your body weight as you walk.
Walking will also build muscles in your legs so they can relieve some pressure off of your joints and handle more of your bodyweight themselves. That means less stress and pain for your knees.
-back to top
Recommended Reading: Bleach Dark Knees
You Participate In High
Its important to stay active, and maintaining an exercise routine can actually help knee pain. But high-impact activities can make knee pain worse. Exercise like running, kickboxing, or high intensity interval training can jar your joints and make your knee pain worse. Some stretching exercises, like squats and lunges, can put extra pressure on your knees as well.
Whatever the cause of your knee pain, we can help. Dr. Shults and the team at Coastal Empire Orthopedics offer a range of knee pain treatments for patients. From physical therapy and bracing to reconstruction or knee replacement surgery, were committed to getting you back to your active lifestyle.
You shouldnt have to live with knee pain. Dr. Shults and his team can help diagnose your pain and find a treatment plan that works for you. Get back to enjoying your life with compassionate care at Coastal Empire Orthopedics. Call our Savannah, Georgia, office today or book your first appointment online and start finding relief from your knee pain.
You Might Also Enjoy…
- 4.9/5
Exercise To Improve Motion And Strength
Walking vigorously for 5-10 minutes is now being recommended as a treatment for knee osteoarthritis and may limit the need for a joint replacement. Walking is an activity that does not require any equipment and can help reduce stiffness and inflammation in the knee joints. Since there is no blood supply in the knee joint, this area relies on the movement of the joint to move fluid. This fluid helps to provide nutrition to the joint. Walking is a weight-bearing exercise that also helps to improve bone health. Walking vigorously has been found to delay the need for a knee replacement for those at risk of developing functional limitations as a result of knee arthritis. There was a decrease in the incidence of knee replacement for those that participate in a regular walking program than those that did not.
Recommended Reading: Inversion Table Benefits For Knees
Benefits Of Walking For Arthritis In The Knee
Walking is an easy activity you can do to help your arthritic knees, as it provides you with all kinds of advantages that help you manage your symptoms. Some benefits of walking include:
- Keeping your cartilage healthy: As a highly mobile joint, the knee contains a great deal of cartilage. Cartilage doesnt receive constant blood flow from your heart to maintain its condition instead, it relies on fluid from your joints for nourishment. When you move your joints, you allow them to feed the cartilage in your knee that keeps it healthy.
- Strengthening your muscles: Any muscle on your body becomes stronger with repeated use. Walking is a form of cardio that gets your heart pumping, and its a great way to fortify all parts of your lower body.
- Supporting a healthy weight: Maintaining your weight is extremely important when you need to manage arthritis. Walking is a low-impact exercise that allows you to get in shape at your own pace.
Even if your stroll is 15 minutes a day, this action allows you to continue to perform your daily life activities. By studying the many benefits of walking for arthritis in the knee, you can understand its power to prevent stiff joints and knee pain.
Exercise And Knee Pain
If your knee pain is due to an injury, surgery, or arthritis, gentle stretching and strengthening exercises may help ease the pain while also improving your flexibility and range of motion.
Exercising a knee thats injured or arthritic may seem counterintuitive, but in fact, exercise is better for your knee than keeping it still. Not moving your knee can cause it to stiffen, and this may worsen the pain and make it harder to go about your daily activities.
Gentle stretching and strengthening exercises can strengthen the muscles that support your knee joint. Having stronger muscles can reduce the impact and stress on your knee, and help your knee joint move more easily.
Before you start an exercise program for knee pain, be sure to talk to your doctor or physical therapist to make sure the exercises are safe for you. Depending on your situation, they may recommend some modifications.
You May Like: How To Get Rid Of Knee Fat And Cellulite
How To Prevent Pain When Walking With Arthritis
Home » How to Prevent Pain When Walking With Arthritis
Wondering if walking is really good for your arthritis, and if so, how can you manage your pain in way to stay active on a regular basis? This in-depth article covers it all on walking for arthritis, and more!
Walking is one of the best forms of exercise you can do when you have arthritis. In fact, walking helps to mobilize joint fluid to lubricate joints and provide nutrients to cartilage.
But if you have pain after your walking workout due to arthritis, you may feel like walking will only aggravate the problem, but it wont!
Plenty of individuals have asked, Is walking good for arthritis in the knee or hip? and here is the research designed to find the answer. Scientists have found these 10 common benefits of walking with arthritis:
Meniscus Tear: Strengthening Exercises For Rehabilitation
Strengthening the muscles around the joint protects your knees from further injury by reducing pressure on the knee as well as helps rehabilitation for a torn meniscus. For most types of meniscus tears, some simple exercises can help to maintain your muscle strength in the quadriceps and hamstrings, hip and calf. Itâs crucial to ensure these areas are functional after injury or surgery. Please always consult your doctor before doing any rehab exercises, even if you feel no pain when you are exercising.
How long does a torn meniscus take to heal? According to Cleveland Clinic, after torn meniscus surgery, the initial recovery time can be up to 2 weeks for patients to receive various physical therapy. The actual recovery time will depend on patientâs condition and recovery process. A patientâs physical therapy program after surgery can be divided into three main phases:
Generally speaking, you should limit movement for up to 2 weeks after surgery to fix your meniscus. Sometimes it will take weeks or months before you can go back to your daily activities after surgery. After uncomplicated meniscectomy or meniscus surgery, some typical times for returning to activities can also be summarized into 3 main phases:
You May Like: How To Use Ginger For Knee Pain
Stop If Anything Hurts
Take a break if your joints start to ache sit on a bench for a minute or two and engage in some easy breathing, then walk again, advises Louw. If the pain is sharp and stabbing, or you feel any new joint pain, its time to stop. Talk to your doctor about what pain is normal and when its a sign of something more serious.
Should You Walk When You Have Knee Pain
If you have mild to moderate pain in your knees due to osteoarthritis, walking and other exercise helps mobilize your joint fluid and lubricate the joints. You should walk and do other exercises that move your knee joints. You are likely to find that the stiffness, pain, and fatigue improve with exercise.
If you have moderate to severe pain in your knees before you start walking, take it easy. Do a shorter walk at an easy pace or try an activity that doesn’t place much stress on the joint, such as water exercises in a pool. If joint pain remains severe, stop immediately as it is a sign of inflammation or joint damage that needs treatment.
If you have joint pain occasionally the day after a walk or run, you should take a day off and do a shorter workout or one that doesn’t put stress on the joint. If you always have joint pain after exercise, you may have to switch to a form of exercise that doesn’t put stress on the knees, such as cycling or swimming.
You May Like: Flying After Knee Replacement Surgery
Why Cycling Is Good For Your Knees
The main reason cycling is great for your knees is because it puts less stress on your joints.
This is great for people with arthritis and other conditions that affect the knee joint.
Whether you use road bikes, stationary bikes, mountain bikes, or recumbent bikes, cycling limits, cycling is not a high-impact exercise. It will limit impact stress on weight-bearing joints like your knees.
Plus, the movement when you pedal the bike helps lubricate your joints and, in turn, reduces pain and stiffness.
Bicycling can also be done at a wide range of intensities.
You can go as fast or slow as youd like, coast for a little bit, use lower gears, or go all out if youre in the mood.
Peer-reviewed studies have shown that people with knee osteoarthritis can benefit from low-intensity cycling. It can improve function and gait, decreasing pain, and boosting aerobic fitness.
Moderate pedaling can promote an increased range of motion in your knee and hip and strengthen your quadriceps.
Cycling also works your glutes and hamstrings, and strong muscles surrounding the knee can help support and protect your joints.
A Diagnosis Of Torn Meniscus Is Not An Indication For Surgery
In most cases, the injury can heal within months and surgery may not be required. You are probably wondering when to see a doctor if you may have a torn meniscus injury? If you are experiencing joint locking, extreme swelling of the knee, severe pain when moving the joint and you are unable to put any weight on the knee. Then you should consult the doctor immediately.
Sometimes even major tears that are found during MRI may not require surgery. The initial treatment for torn meniscus should be aimed at reducing swelling thus your knee should be treated first with physiotherapy and observe if the symptoms of swelling, pain and joint locking can be relieved over time.
One of the best indicators of the necessity for torn meniscus surgery is to see if the swelling and or pain persists 2 weeks after rehab. If the swelling and or pain return after rehab, then most likely, surgery is required. Please note surgery itself can not guarantee for future traumatic tears and the result of the recovery. Hence please consult your doctor if swelling persist after rehab and take time to discuss your situation thoroughly.
You May Like: Does Tommie Copper Knee Sleeve Work
Forming Good Walking Techniques
Is Walking Good For Knee Bursitis
Housemaids knee is one of the most common types of bursitis. And, it happens because of repetitive motion. This raises the question: Is walking good for knee bursitis?
The short answer is that, yes, walking can be good for knee bursitis. But, there are certain situations where it might be better to stay off your feet.
For example, you can do light walking if you still want to stay active but running makes your pain worse. But, you should also avoid walking long distances if you have poor mechanics.
Allow me to get into better detail.
Also Check: Can You Use An Inversion Table After Knee Replacement
How To Instantly Fix Knee Pain When Going Up And Down Stairs
Are you dealing with a knee pain when youre going up or downstairs? Well, in this video today, Im going to show you how to instantly, massively reduce your knee pain. Possibly even get rid of it with just what Im going to show you in this video today.
Now, disclaimer, theres more to it than what Im going to show you today to solving your knee problem for the long term. But if youve got stairs at home, or you encounter stairs every day, wherever you go, work life, things that you have to do, this technique will reduce your knee pain, pretty massively possibly even get rid of it completely.
My name is Dr. David Middaugh. And Im a specialist physical therapist at El Paso Manual Physical Therapy. And this channel is dedicated to helping people on YouTube. get active, healthy and mobile. Again, while avoiding unnecessary surgery, injections, and medications, be sure to subscribe and turn on your notifications, so you dont miss any valuable tips that we share every week.
So Im going to show you on a staircase in just a moment how exactly to go up and down the stairs. But before we get there, I just want to give you two knowledge pieces so that you can have a better understanding of how the stair climbing works both going up and downstairs.
Turn your knee out over the foot intention of the buck muscle as you come up to the next step and you can repeat on the right. Repeat on the left. Always land with your foot and knee out and think about squeezing your butt muscle.
Preventing Knee Hyperextension Injuries
There are a couple of things you can do to reduce the risk of a hyperextended knee
- Warm Up: before playing sports so that your body and muscles are ready for action
- Strengthening Exercises: Having good strength and core stability helps to protect the knee from hyperextension injuries. This is particularly important if you are hypermobile
Recommended Reading: Where To Get Knee High Converse
Regular Exercise To Support The Knee
The function of muscle is to support and move the knee. Walking is a weight bearing activity which helps to increase bone density.
Before starting any exercise program, it is important to consult your doctor, physiotherapist or Orthopaedic surgeon to get medical clearance and specific guidelines for what is appropriate for your particular situation. Once you have received medical clearance, it would also be a good idea to hire an advanced personal trainer to assess your gait and design a program to balance the muscles surrounding the hip, knee and ankle.
Use Cold Packs After Walking
This tip is great for those struggling with excess inflammation in their knee joints. While some inflammation is good, triggering the healing process, too much can cause unnecessary pain after walking.
Youve done well by getting your joint fluid moving to transport nutrients into the cartilage. But, if pain persists, you can apply cold packs afterward to help reduce inflammation.
Aim for about 15 minutes or until your knee feels numb.
You May Like: How Much Does Aflac Pay For Outpatient Surgery
Increase Your Mileage Gradually
Studies show walking at least 6,000 steps a day can decrease the pain associated with osteoarthritis. But depending on your current state of fitness, youll need to be aware that increasing your mileage or step count too much too quickly can lead to knee pain or other injuries.
As a general rule, increase your total weekly mileage by no more than 10% each week. Be patient and youll eventually work yourself up to your mileage or step goals safely.