You’re probably working out regularly to maintain your overall fitness but sometimes too much can be bad for you especially when your knees start to hurt even when you have rested. The pain and discomfort can sometimes prevent you from doing your regular fitness routine but should this stop you completely? Of course not!
Of course, you still need to address the pain that you are feeling so go and see your doctor first. Another way to avoid putting a lot of pressure on your knees is to make some modifications to your workout such as those below.
- Squats. Sometimes squatting lower than what your body can manage comfortably can put a strain on your knees. The best way to fix this is to use a physio ball which you can place behind your back as you stand back against a wall during your squats. This eases the pressure on your knees as you lower yourself into a deep squat.
- Burpees. This exercise is a full body workout because you will be doing a deep squat with jumping at the end. If your squat is weak, you might strain your ligaments and tendons especially when you’re jumping to form a straight line from your shoulders to your heels. The best fix for this is to hinge at the hips to push your butt backwards instead of your knees going forward which can put a lot of stress on the joints. Your weight should be carried by the middle of your feet as well as heels rather than the toes.
- Box jumps. Your bones become stronger when you jump up and down but there must be a progression. Begin with small jumps first then go for bigger ones. To fix this, you should do standing jumps first. Once you’ve mastered it, go for split jumps where you stand with one leg forward then go into a lunge before jumping up and switching legs upon landing. Since jumping workouts are challenging, you need to start with the basics first to give your muscles and joints time to adjust and strengthen.
- Glute kickbacks. Since glute kickbacks are done on hands and knees, the knees may be injured in some way or the other because of lack of padding or cushion. It’s either you look for a spongier mat or add another mat to help support your knees.
- Lunges. If your knees aren’t strong enough just yet when doing lunges, you can expect some joint pain when you overdo yourself. By doing standing lunges, you will help alleviate the pressure on the joints. To do this, you need to stand with one foot forward and the other anchored on the floor. Bend the knee to lower yourself into a lunge then push yourself back up to first position. You can keep your knee above your ankle as you go into a lunge but the main objective here is to workout your glutes so give your glutes a nice squeeze as you perform lunges.
