For managing arthritis knee pain probably the best way is knee pain exercises. Exercise is very important, but it is possible that you are doing some wrong exercises without realizing it. Some wrong exercises can even do more harm to knee arthritis than good. So what are these wrong exercises? and what exercises to avoid in knee pain? We will discuss them in this article.
#1 Knee bending in quadriceps exercise
The first exercise on our list of exercises to avoid in knee pain is the quadriceps stretching exercises. When doing quadriceps stretching exercises we have to bend the knees. I’ll give you an overall idea that you have to avoid every exercise in which you have to bend the knee more than 90° in knee arthritis. It’s okay to bend the knee up to 90°, but when you bend the knee more than 90° it increases the impact on the knees and our arthritic pain increases.
The most common way of quadriceps stretching is you lie down on your tummy and hold the legs and pull it towards your buttock as shown in the figure. So look, we do get a good quadriceps stretch, but it impacts the knee a lot.
It has a bad effect on our knees and the arthritic pain increases instead of reducing. People do this same exercise while standing. Here you hold the leg and pull it the same way as in lying. You shouldn’t do this either, the knee bends in this and it impacts the knee if you are a patient with knee arthritis.
Usually, knee arthritis doesn’t happen in young people. If they have a knee problem then based on the problem, you may or may not do this exercise But the elderly people who have arthritis should definitely not do this. exercise.
#2 Avoid vajrasana in knee pain
The next exercise is not really an exercise, it’s a Yogasana which we call Vajrasana. People practising Yoga may be familiar with this and in many painful conditions, we prescribe Vajrasana like shin pain. If there is some pain in these muscles on the front of the lower leg then we prescribe Vajrasana. So what we do in this is we sit over the lower leg in knee bending position. This stretches the tibialis anterior muscle so it is beneficial in shin pain.
But if you have painful arthritis then you should not do this exercise at all. The knee is bending more than 90° and getting compressed. The knee is bending and compressing which will further damage that arthritis has already damaged. So you should avoid this exercise. There is another Asana where we lie down this way, you should never do that one, completely avoid it.
#3 Squatting exercises to avoid in knee pain
The third exercise on the list of exercises to avoid in knee pain is squatting. We call this position squatting, see. Usually, many people at the gym perform this exercise. We allow semi-squat in knee pain. When we squat half, we call it semi-squat. Or wall squat meaning you squat taking the support of a wall, these are okay. But when you squat completely you see how much the knee bends and the whole body weight goes on the knees. Hence, we have to avoid squatting this way.
#4 Other activities to avoid
These were exercises, along with that I’ll give you tips. You have to avoid Indian-style toilets. I asked to avoid squatting and in the Indian-style toilet, we squatted. So we have to avoid an Indian-style toilet, if possible get a commode fixed at home or you can get a makeshift commode arrangement at home.
Then you should also reduce stair climbing. It is impossible to completely stop it because we will encounter stairs in our day-to-day lives. So you should reduce it. This was about which exercises you shouldn’t do. I have already made articles on which exercises you should do. You can watch those articles, I’ll give the link in the description or at the end of this article.
Keep Reading: 6 Best Exercises for Arthritis in knee Pain Relief
Reference:
Zeighami, A., Dumas, R. & Aissaoui, R. Knee loading in OA subjects is correlated to flexion and adduction moments and to contact point locations. Sci Rep 11, 8594 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-87978-2
