Today I’m going to teach you why biking is the number one exercise for your knees. Many people complain about knee pain and this is very common if you play tennis, run, or do any kind of sport that requires knee movement like soccer, baseball, etc.
I’ve had a lot of patients come in with knee pain and most of the time they’re complaining about knee pain here across the patellar tendon, or they’re complaining about pain to the side, on the top, and very, very commonly on the inside. There’s a lot of ligaments, tendons, and things that are connected in the same area. Most people have this knee pain, and one of the reasons is weakness of these muscles or these tendons.
Throughout the day as we’re walking around we’re bending our knees but we’re only bending them 10 to 20 degrees. We’re not doing a whole lot of other movements except for this minute motion. That’s not really good for range of motion. Then, when you play your sport, or any other kind of exercise, your knees are going to be weak.
I’m going to show you why biking is awesome. Here we go, Janelle is going to bike around and the bike is very effective because you’re mobilizing the joint pretty much through its whole range of motion. You’re getting that full gyration, that full circular motion, and you’re allowing the joints to strengthen, you’re allowing the muscles, the tendons, the ligaments all around the knee to strengthen as well. There is also a lot of connection between your quad muscles, your ligaments on the outside, ligaments on the inside, and the patellar tendon which gets very inflamed when people have weakness in their knees.
How much time should you ride the bike? It's is very simple, 10-15 minutes per day is enough to get enough range of motion into your knees, bring a lot of blood flow, and also strengthen your knee.
I’ll finish up with a story. Back in April, I was running outside a lot, so I increased my running to about 4 miles, 3 times a week. I started to get some patellar tendonitis, or more commonly patellar tendinopathy. So after some treatments, and doing the bike, we increased a lot of the range in motion and a lot of that pain went away. If you want to get rid of your knee pain, get on a bike, 10-15 minutes, 3-4 times a week. If you have any questions, feel free to visit www.123yourhealth.com.
