The key to solving chronic knee pain, keeping active, and maintaining your lifestyle as you get older lies in your movement and strength. However, the wrong exercises can further imbalances that contribute to pain. Our Knee Pain Workout series will show you exactly what to do to help you build strength to solve chronic knee pain…without stressing your joints.
In this Level 3 knee pain workout we will continue to strengthen your glutes, legs, and core to limit the impact that goes through your knees. To avoid aggravting your knee pain be sure you build a solid movement foundation with our Level 1 and 2 Knee Pain Workouts.
Level 1 Workout | Level 2 Workout
Equipment Needed
Adding resistance to your knee pain workout is required to continue building strength. For this workout you will need access to:
- Foam Roller (I love the Trigger Point Brand)
- 8″ Mini Band
- Two Medium To Heavy Dumbells
Click Here To Find All The Equipment You Need For The Perfect Home Gym
Warm Up
The purpose of a good warm up for a knee pain workout is to prepare the muscles and joints for the work they are about to do.
Yoga Mobility Warm Up
This easy yoga flow is a great warm up for the entire body. If this is difficult to perform due to mobility issues, it’s OK to use the warm up from the Level 1 and Level 2 workouts.
Strength Exercises
This knee pain workout will target your glutes, legs, and core to protect your knees as you move though your day. Use your timer and perform each exercise for 1 minute. Performing slow and maintaining control is more important than number of reps.
Butterfly Bridges
This variation of the bridge engages the entire glute complex to further strengthen your hips and hamstrings.
Standing Hip Abduction
A strong glute med is required for controlling knee movement when standing on a single leg. Standing Hip Abduction is an advanced glute med exercise is great for strength, balance, and control.
Bowler Lunge
Another more functional way to target the glute med muscle group. The key to this movement is maintaining balance and control.
The Farmer’s Carry
Weighted Carries are one of my favorite functional core exercises and something I include in almost every knee pain workout. A medium to heavy weight is preferred to get the most out of this movement.
Full Body Functional Patterns
The Elevated Kettlebell Lift
The deadlift is one of the best ways to build full body strength to protect your knees. It’s also difficult to master. The Elevated Kettlebell Lift is a way to transition your hinge movement to the deadlift to help you safely build strength without stressing your joints.
The Banded Air Squat
Adding a mini band to our squat movement helps cue your body to ‘press your knees out’. This prevents your knees from caving inward during the movement and engages more of the glute complex.
The Reverse Lunge
The reverse lunge is a great exercise to build single leg strength to improve side to side imbalances as well as strengthen your hamstrings and glutes to protect your knees. The reverse lunge places less impact on the knee joint itself and is why we recomend it over the forward lunge.
This knee pain workout is meant to be performed in a circuit. After you’ve completed the first round, start back with your butterfly bridge and perform series again (don’t do warm up twice). Workout should take 25-30 minutes to complete.
Need extra motivation? Follow along with Dr. Baird’s Knee Pain Workout on YouTube
