Exercise, What?
Many people who suffer from osteoarthritis in their knees and hips have tried some form of exercise, sometimes to good effect and sometimes to no avail.
Our health industry has made us believe that exercise which is painful like tennis or other activities like walking, or going down stairs and hills, is doing more damage to our knees.
But actually, pain from knee osteoarthritis is mostly caused by inflammation in the knee joint from incorrect loading or persisting through the exercises or activities which cause pain with no chance for rest or offloading.
It is not caused by the common “wear and tear” which most people are being told.
Exercise, Why?
The best analogy to explain why exercise works is to think of the joint cartilage as a sponge.
When we do weight bearing activities, we push joint fluid out of our cartilage and when we rest, the nutrient rich joint fluid in the cartilage is restored, like a sponge.
Meaning that we need a balance of loaded activity AND REST to nourish the knee joint and restore the much needed nutrients to break the cycle of inflammation.
Exercise, How?
The best way to choose great exercises is to choose them individually and progress them or change them as YOU need.
A fantastic guide for doing this is to follow your pain.
Like we have established, exercise is not ‘wearing and tearing’ your knees further, and some pain is okay.
The research shows that if we keep our pain to a minimum level such as 2/10 on a pain scale, you will have less negative effect after exercising.
GOLDEN TIP: choose weight bearing exercises that you can do which only cause minimal pain and start there. Progress exercises which aren’t as bad, regress exercises which are. (But remember to try them again every couple weeks, you may have improved).
Exercise, When?
The international guidelines recommend getting at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise a day, as well as doing strength training twice weekly.
As mentioned earlier, your knees need a rest between bouts of weight bearing exercises.
However, there are plenty of alternative forms of exercise that you can complete after your weight bearing knee strengthening exercises.
Like: swimming, aqua aerobics, cycling, upper body weights, Tai Chi, yoga etc.
Try to implement these on your rest days and you’ll meet the recommended guidelines easy!
Most of All, Enjoy it
The biggest predictor of keeping up with an exercise routine is to pick things you enjoy to do.
The best form of exercise is the one that you do. Seek professional help to assist you, we can’t do it all on our own.
Start small, slow, reward yourself and if you have a bad day or flare up, know that it’s okay. There’s always tomorrow.