Say Goodbye to Knee Pain with Strength and Flexibility

Hey there, welcome to the Grace Health Podcast, your source for aging strong in your physical, mental and spiritual health. My name is Amy Connell. I'm a weight neutral certified personal trainer and nutrition coach who loves walks with friends, chocolate and Jesus. Whether you're looking to grow stronger as you age, nourish your body, mind and spirit, or fit all the pieces of your health together to holistically thrive, this is the place for women over 40. I'm here to guide you in the areas I can and bring on experts in the areas I'm still learning, and, of course, we cover it all in a whole lot of grace. I'm glad you're here. One of the things about training women above age 40 and beyond is our bodies just don't work like they used to. This is probably not a surprise to you. My body does not work like it used to. I want to be very clear before I come in talking about today's subject. I still feel challenges. I still have lower back issues on my left side. Almost every day I'm working through that. I'm trying to take the knowledge I have. So I want to make sure that I'm coming in as someone who does not claim to be perfect in all of this. However, one common complaint I hear from women over 40 is my knees hurt and because of that I can't do squats or lunges. Then what happens is, because that is often the only type of exercise they're familiar with doing, they don't do any kind of movement to strengthen their lower posterior chain. So that's basically everything from your hips down and then things just get worse because our muscles weaken. There are a lot of different reasons for having what we call bad knees. That can be something like osteoarthritis, which is just kind of that most common form of arthritis. That's when that cartilage, that protective cartilage at the ends of our bones, wears down over time. That can lead to pain or swelling or stiffness of your knees. Another thing is our muscles are just getting weaker. There is a term called sarcopenia, which is basically age related weakening of our muscles. This will happen no matter what, and we can prevent the rate at which our muscles decline by strength training. But that still happens. And when we have weak muscles, particularly in our legs and I'm going to specifically talk about that here in a second then we can't support our knee adequately. Another reason for feeling like we have bad knees is just joint degeneration. No surprise, over time our joints can just degenerate, there's just wear and tear. If you've had knee injuries in the past, like I'm specifically thinking of one of my sons, he does not have any problems right now and actually he has employed a lot of the things that we're going to talk about today. But I have to admit I'm like I wonder what his knees are going to look like when he's 50, because he has half of a meniscus of one of you have two meniscus, but he has half of one missing on one of his legs and so I don't know what that's going to look like. And maybe you've had ACL tears, mcl tears, you've just had joint issues or knee issues in the past that are still kind of with you today. And then another reason we can have knee pain is just because our flexibility is less. It's funny, probably five to six years ago I did something called yoga, basically, for the entire month of June. All I did was yoga. I didn't walk, I didn't run, I didn't do anything. And this is back when I was running a lot more and because of that I had measured my flexibility. I like data, I like measuring things as long as it's not becoming too problematic or idolizing or anything like that. So I know how much flexibility I had in just sitting down and folding over in my hamstrings. Let me tell you it is not what it was. In fact, I don't even know that it was what it was before the month started, let alone after the month. So we do lose flexibility as we go along, which can impact our joints because we're not as supple in our muscles and ligaments that are surrounding our knee joint, and so that can obviously contribute to stiffness and discomfort, so we're not moving as much. And then, when we're not moving as much, then our joints just aren't going to be as happy, and one of those. You know, an object in motion stays in motion. And just as a side note, I was at a doctor's office years ago with my husband and the doctor said something that has stuck with me ever since, and he said you know, you can have the strongest muscles in the world, but if you can't bend down and pick up your car keys when they drop, you've got a problem. It was a great reminder to focus on our flexibility and making sure that we do have that range of motion in our body. So what do we do about that? Well, I have talked about this before, but I think it's worth coming on and talking about again. In my gym I have two posters. One of them is the muscular system, one of them is the skeletal system, and I know that's super nerdy. I actually will go in there and just and like I just love looking at it. I think I should have been a physical therapist. I love seeing how everything is connected and also when I'm having some issues I might be able to kind of pinpoint oh, this is the muscle that I probably need to work on or something like that. You can Google like skeletal system and muscular system. But I want you to visualize your hips and then your femur and then like it's again, that's called the lower posterior change. So everything from your hips down your femur is your thigh bone. Your thigh bone connects up into the outside part of your hips. You know there's kind of at the top that's the iliac crest, and then down at the bottom, which is kind of on the outside of your thighs. If you feel that and you feel that bone, that's where your femur connects in. We have several muscles that connect to the femur. Those muscles are in our hips and particularly the gluteus medius, which is a muscle on the outside of our hips. The gluteus minimus is on the backside of our butt. If we were to peel off the top layer, which is the gluteus maximus, the maximum muscle, the big one, then we would see several other smaller muscles. The gluteus minimus is one of them. The glute medius and the glute min or minimus both connect down to the femur in what's called the greater trochanter joint. That's the bottom portion of your hips, where your femur comes in. When we have weak gluteus minimus or gluteus medius muscles, then the femur is not held securely, which means the femur can be moving around at the bottom part. The bottom part is the knee. That's why, when you take a moment to strengthen your gluteus medius and gluteus minimus and the other muscles surrounding your hip region, it's called the musculoskeletal hip complex. If you want to know the form away, then that can help support your knees. So I am going to give you three just in your ears, three exercises that you can do and I'm also going to link in the show notes a what I call a mini muscle workout. Your mini muscles are all of the muscles in that hip region that support a lot of different things, including your pelvic floor, but also supporting your knees. So here are three movements that, if you know what these are, you can just do these and you know I'm all about multitasking. So do these during a warmup, when you are getting ready to strength train or if you are doing any kind of high impact movement. These are great ones to incorporate as part of your warmup. I would say start with maybe two sets of 10 or two sets of 15, working up to about three sets of 15. If you have the time, even just one set, though, is wonderful to do, because it activates those muscles for a warmup. So if you're wanting to strengthen those muscles, do more sets with more reps. If you're wanting to activate it, even just doing 10 to 15 reps of these movements will help. And, of course, you can find the mini muscle workout that I have on YouTube. I'm also going to share one other resource I have with you that is even more holistic and comprehensive. So one exercise is clamshells. That really specifically targets the gluteus medius, the one on the side. Basically, line yourself up like you are laying on your side on your mat, bend your knees, and I want your feet, your hips, your shoulders and then your elbow if you're propped up on your elbow all aligned with the back of the mat, so that way everything is staying in line. Stack your hips on top of each other. It's real easy to kind of lean back on the meat, the muscle of that glute, so you might need to kind of rotate that hip in and then stack it up and then you're going to open your knees up and down. A lot of people will put like a resistance loop right above your knees. Don't ever do it on your knee joint, but do it above your knee. If these are new to you, don't put the loop on yet. Just try 10 to 15, see how that feels. Make sure you're squeezing that top glute. If you are laying on your right side and your left knee is going up, then your left glute is the one you want to be squeezing. And then, of course, do it on the other side. Another one for your glute med is side lying leg lifts. In this position, just straighten out your feet so you're all aligned, you have straight legs and then I say kiss your toes together and raise your heel up. Your toes are touching for just a second and then your heel is lifted up. That causes what's called an internal rotation, which will activate that gluteus medius, that side muscle, then lift that top foot up. So, in the same example, if you're laying on your right side, then lift your left leg up about a foot above your other one I call that home base and then lift the leg up another foot and then back down. These do not need to be super high. This is not Jane Fonda. Okay, jane Fonda did the whole like the full range of motion, and that's not necessarily wrong to do. It depends on what your goals are. The goals for this is to have smaller motion and Target in on that gluteus medius and it actually gets the minimus as well a little bit so you can do those sideline leg lifts. The third one is glute bridges. I actually Will probably do some sort of episode on just the many benefits of glute bridges. I am right now. People who know me and people who train with me know that I get really stuck on one particular type of movement, and Glute bridges has kind of been the hot button movement that I have been Incorporating for myself and for my clients for a really long time. Like so far. It's the winner. This is what I really like doing the most because it has so many benefits with regard to our knees. It also strengthens your gluteus medius and your minimus. Lie on your back, bend your knees and Take your feet about hip width apart. You'll want your feet about 12 to 18 inches away from your butt, so don't pull your feet really really close and don't put them really far out either. Make a tripod with your feet, so press into your big toe, your little toe and your heel. Squeeze your glutes before you do anything. Then lift up just a few inches, just like with those sideline leg lifts. This is not a range of motion movement. When you lift up, keep those glutes squeezed and then release down and then release your glutes. So anytime your butt is up in the air, I want you to squeeze those glutes and then coming back down and Release them. When you do this and if you are new to this, I Want you to physically point to what you are feeling some heat on. Where are you feeling this burn? My hope is that it is in your glutes. If you are feeling it in your hamstrings, that is often common and what that is saying is your hamstrings are doing the work and not your glutes. So put your hands on your butt. That is often just a great way for your brain To connect down to like, oh, this is the muscle we need to be working. So I have seen this with my clients. It is incredible. There was one in particular who had a hard time kind of activating particular muscles. I would touch that muscle with her permission and then you could see it turn on and you could see it work. So if you are feeling this in your hamstrings, touch the sides of your butt just as you go up, and that may help, because that's where you really want to feel that burning, not necessarily in your hamstrings. I I promised earlier another resource and I do have a free download that helps strengthen your legs without squats or lunges, and it focuses not only on the gluteus medius and minimus, but also things like your gluteus maximus, your hamstrings and several other muscles. When you get this, you will get 12 movements that focus on seven different muscles. I tell you exactly which muscles go with each movement, I provide a video demonstrating proper form and how to do them, and then I offer you three customizable, printable workouts to fit your level. The video will Demonstrate everything that you need to know, and then you can take those movements and Incorporate them in your workout, however, that works, and even if you just use a handful of them to warm your body up in the morning, that is great too. You can get that at graced healthcom. Slash strong legs and it's just G-r-a-c-e-d health all together. Dot-com. Slash strong legs. So that is my free gift to you. If you are trying to strengthen your legs because you feel like you have bad knees but you don't really want to do squats and lunges, in summary, if you have bad knees, these few exercises may help, and, of course, I am not a doctor. I am not a physical therapist. You may need more help than what I can provide in a 15-ish minute video. If so, please, please, please, find the right medical provider for you. Don't forget to get your free download graced healthcom, and if you want to get your free download, check out my website and I'll be there for you. Thank you so much. Strong legs, and that is all for today. Go out there and have a graced day. Thanks for listening today. If this episode was valuable to you, could you do one of two things that are enormously valuable to me? That's super simple for you. Number one just share this with a friend, super simple. Number two provide a rating and review. Haven't yet subscribed to my monthly journal? Why not? I send it out twice a month and it is a private fun space for me to share some of my favorite foods and recipes, movements, books, sermons and more. You never know what you're gonna get, but I promise it will add value to your day. You can sign up at graced health comm slash monthly dash updates and, of course, the link is in the show notes. Thanks again for listening and I'll see you next time. You