The knee is one of the major lower body joints and it plays an important role in most sporting endeavours. The Knee is a hinge joint that moves via flexion and extension. The quadriceps are responsible for knee extension, and the hamstrings are responsible for knee flexion.

Causes of Knee Pain

Pain is a complex topic. We can feel pain because of an associated injury or damage. We can also feel pain with no associated injury or damage. This does not make your painful experience any less real.

An injury could be caused by chronic or acute factors. Chronic factors include long term overuse of the knees (i.e. too much training with too little rest over a long period). Acute factors being a sudden injury onset (I.e. ACL injury from landing funny during a game of football).

Now no matter the cause or the level of damage to the knees, procedures to reduce pain in the gym are often very similar…

Exercises To Reduce Knee Pain

In the case of chronic injuries, this increases your capacity for load, meaning that you are no longer overtraining because your knees have a greater capacity for load.

Strengthening the areas around the knee can also be beneficial while managing an injury or pain; this is likely because it gives you a compensation strategy to use until the knees are back to full strength.

Dumbbell Leg Extension

The knee extension is a great isolated exercise for forcing people to load their knees. Often during exercises like back squats, a person with knee pain will subconsciously organise their body away from loading the knees, to avoid pain, by using other structures, like the hips and back proportionately more.

• Sit on a bench or a plyo box with a Dumbbell squeezed between your feet.

• Hold onto the seat to brace your body for the exercise.

• Lift the dumbbell and your feet off the floor, squeezing your quads as hard as you can to fully extend your knees.

• Slowly reverse the movement to complete the rep.

Kettlebell Goblet Wall Squat

Isometrics, like the wall squat, can be really beneficial for reducing knee pain because you can target positions that are painful and can accumulate a lot of time at the painful joint angle.

• Assume a goblet squat position with a kettlebell; grasping the bell between the palms of your hands, holding it up against your chest.

• Sit against a wall, with the femurs approximately parallel to the floor.

• Hold for a predetermined time, pushing against the floor with your feet to stop yourself from falling to the floor.

Calf Raises

As previously mentioned, strengthening areas around the knee can be really helpful to provide compensation strategies to take the load off the knee while it gets back to full function. Strengthening the calf may do just that by taking more of the work during exercises like walking or running.

• Stand tall with your knees and hips extended.

• Push the floor away through the ball of your foot until up on your tip toes to contract the calf.

• Slowly lower back down to complete the rep.

• Perform flat on the floor or with a squat ramp for extra range of motion.

Single Leg Kettlebell Deadlift

With more severe knee injuries, especially those to the ACL and MCL, knee stability can become compromised. Exercises like this can be helpful for increasing stability at the knee during dynamic movements.

• Stand on one foot, with a Kettlebell in the opposite hand.

• Push your hips as far back as you can, reaching to the wall behind you with the foot off the floor, until you feel a big stretch down the back of the standing leg.

• Reverse the movement to finish the rep.

• Swap legs and repeat for equal reps.

Plyo Box Sit To Stand

The limited range of motion and two-legged stance used in the exercise is a great starting point for lots of people dealing with knee pain due to the great stability and lesser stress on the knees.

• Stand in front of a plyo box with your feet shoulder width apart, facing slightly outwards.

• Sit down between your knees until your bum touches the bench.

• Push the floor away to stand back up and complete the rep.

• Add weight in the form of a barbell, kettlebell or dumbbell to progress this into a full box squat as you start to feel more confident.

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Tags: Equipment > Kettlebells ; Exercise Type > Strength