Week #3 of 4 Healthy Knees Strength Mini Series - The 1 exercise you might be most afraid of

Welcome back to the 4-week mini series on Knee Strength.  This is lesson #3, focusing on muscle strength. To get the videos, click here!

Muscle development is part of gaining strength, building stamina, and creating freedom of movement. Don’t worry, you are not going to get “bulky” from these exercises, but you may notice that with time, you have nicer muscle definition.

In the Healthy Knees Strength Book, we’ve created an 8-week plan that introduces the strength training in order so that you can build from the base and progress to more complex moves.  Strength training for knees is divided into four predominant areas that must be strengthened to have healthy knees:

             Ankle Calf Dominant

             Knee Dominant

             Hip Dominant

             Core Dominant

What?  Why are those non-knee exercises a part of knee strength?  That gets back to Lesson #1 and your body's kinetic chain.  Remember how we talked about the importance of the whole chain for knee health?  Developing all of the muscles in the kinetic chain are key to healthy knees.  In fact, if you ignore some of them, it may cause weakness and imbalance that can make your knee pain worse. 

I've had many clients with weak glute minimus and glute minumus (your side butt muscles) and once strengthened helped their knees.  Strong muscles help keep your joints in good alignment and joints in good alignment cause less stress in the kinetic chain. 

(If you missed Lesson #1, Click here)

The one move you may be afraid of:

Today’s video highlights the one you may be most afraid of...the squat.  Don’t worry, we break it down into steps so that you’ll graduate and never look back again.  In the Healthy Knees Strength Book we offer the 12 most important exercises for your knees including this one.

Don’t try this all at once! 

We will show you the sequence of moves that should be done over the 8-week period of our training plan in order to move ahead without injury.

Get the mini=series here.

To your Healthy & Happy Knees,

~Coach Robin

Robin Robertson
Founder: Healthy Knees Coach
Author: Healthy Knees Cycling (Healthy Knees Strength coming soon!)
Owner: Bellingham Training & Tennis Club