The Best At Home Workout For Knee Pain | Level 1

Our Level 1 workout for knee pain is designed to limit the impact that goes through your knee joints in a safe and challenging environment. Each exercise was chosen to help improve movement patterns, mobility, and strength to take pressure off your knees and build the confidence in your body's ability to do all of your favorite activities.  We will work on strengthening you glute max, glute med, single leg balance, and core strength as well as introduce and practice the hip hinge, squat, and lunge movement patterns. By committing to improving these movements, we’ve been able to help our community solve years of knee pain – even when nothing else has worked.

Equipment Needed

Our workouts are designed to be performed with minimal equipment. With that being said, to get the most out of your workout for knee pain I suggest having the following equipment available.

  • Foam Roller (I love the Trigger Point Brand)
  • A 12" Step
  • Bench, Chair or Couch
  • Medium to Heavy Weight
Click Here To Find All The Equipment You Need For The Perfect Home Gym

Workout For Knee Pain Warm Up

Every workout for knee pain pain should begin with a proper warm up. The following exercises will help prepare your muscles and joints for the following workout. Grab a timer and perform each movement for 1 minute (each side if applicable).

Foam Roll Legs

Foam rolling can be a great tool to ease knee pain and prepare your muscles for a workout. For knee pain I suggest focusing on your quads, hamstrings an calves.https://vimeo.com/271380943

Hip Flexor Stretch

Used to improve flexibility and mobility of your hip flexors and quads which are commonly tight in those with knee pain.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvN6DSmNOm0&feature=emb_title

Side Lunge Hip Mobilization

Further mobilize your hips joints and prepare for many of the movements performed in this workout.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AruuHWQZZQ

Workout For Knee Pain Strength Exercises

This workout for knee pain is designed to strengthen your glutes, legs, and core to protect your knees as you move through your day. Use your timer and perform each exercise for 1 minute. Performing slow and maintaining control is more important than number of reps.

The Glute Bridge

Strong glutes are absolutely essential for less knee pain and better overall knee health. The Glute Bridge is the safest and most effective way to build strength in your glutes and hamstrings. https://youtu.be/nuapk_-Q2BI

Clamshells

A safe an effective glute med strengthening exercise. Strong glute medius muscles supports your body in the single leg stance to prevent your knee from caving inward while walking, running, etc.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN9ukMKrdEo

Toe Taps

A functional exercise to improve balance, coordination, and single leg strength. You will feel this move in the glute med (outside hip) of your stance leg. If you lose your balance simply return to the starting position and begin again.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03qmWg4Qk5g

Kettlebell March

All movement starts at the core which is why core strengthening needs to be part of our workout for knee pain. Weighted carries are one of my favorite functional core strengthening exercise. Use a medium to heavy weight to improve the effectiveness of this exercise.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyPn0OTZ67o

Full Body Movement Patterning

Improving movement patterns (how we move) limits impact on your joints as you move through the day. These foundational movement patterns in this workout for knee pain will later be used in later workouts for knee pain and to build full body strength.

Hip Hinge

Learning to hip hinge helps keep your center of gravity over your weight bearing joints to limit impact on your knee.. It also forces you to engage muscles of the posterior chain (glutes and hamstrings), which is important in solving knee pain.https://youtu.be/Dn3GexXx228

Click Here To Learn More About How To Perform The Hip Hinge

The Box Squat

A full body strength and mobility move. For knee pain, focus on finding the right squat stance for your body type and pressing your knees out as you perform the squat.https://youtu.be/sWKlUCGfX9s

Click Here To Learn How To Perform The Squat Without Knee Pain

The Step Up

A safe, effective, and functional exercise for knee pain. Focus on pressing off the front foot (not 'toeing off' the back).https://youtu.be/gWFm4J3dUZEThis workout for knee pain is meant to be performed in a circuit. After you’ve completed the first round, start back  with your glute bridge and perform series again (don’t do warm up twice). Workout should take 25-30 minutes to complete.Always keep in mind that the goal of these workouts is to provide a solution for knee pain. The last thing we want is to aggravate your knee pain by progressing our exercises too quickly. Ability, experience, and previous injuries will all play a role in how fast we can progress to Level 2.

Need extra motivation? Follow along with Dr. Baird as he performs our Level 1 workout for Knee Pain 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjg2D6Naa78&t=205s

Limited By Knee Pain? Get Started With Our Free Program

Solving Pain With Strength: An Approachable, Step-by-Step Strength Program For Adults Limited By Joint Pain

DOANLOAD YOUR FREE GUIDE HERE

Previous
Previous

The Best Lunge Alternatives For Those With Bad Knees

Next
Next

The Deadlift For Beginners | How To Perform Without Pain