Knee Exercise

Knee Exercise: Before You Start

• Take a few minutes to walk around and give your knee joints and thigh muscles a chance to stretch and warm up.
• All movements should be done slowly, at a controlled pace. Never rush through these exercises.
• Use slow, steady movements. No bouncing.
• Start with a small number of repetitions, increasing the number of reps as you get stronger

Knee Exercise for Older Adults

• Strength exercises build older adult muscles and increase your metabolism, which helps to keep your weight and blood sugar in check.
• Balance exercises build leg muscles, and this helps to prevent falls. According to the NIH, U.S. hospitals have 300,000 admissions for broken hips each year, many of them seniors, and falling is often the cause of those fractures.
• Stretching exercises can give you more freedom of movement, which will allow you to be more active during your senior years. Stretching exercises alone will not improve your endurance or strength.
• Endurance exercises are any activity—walking, jogging, swimming, biking, even raking leaves—that increases your heart rate and breathing for an extended period of time. Build up your endurance gradually, starting with as little as 5 minutes of endurance activities at a time.

Knee Exercise: Wall Slide Strengthens Thigh Muscles

• Stand with your back against a wall, and your feet straight in front of you.
• Slide down, keeping your back against the wall, until you are in a slight sitting position.
• Slide down only as far as you feel comfortable; when you get stronger you will be able to slide into more of a sitting position.
• For the first few times you do this knee exercise, hold the sitting position for a few seconds, then slide back up. As your quad muscles get stronger, you can hold the sitting position for up to 20 seconds.
• Starting from a standing position, repeat this knee exercise a few times at first. As you feel stronger, you work up to repeating this knee exercise 10 times.