One Incredible Exercise to Fix Knee Stiffness (Ages 50+)

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In this episode, Farnham’s leading over-50’s physiotherapist, Will Harlow, reveals a great way to relieve knee stiffness from arthritis or past injuries!

If you’re suffering from nagging knee pain that hurts in the morning and stops you from walking as far as you’d like, you can take our free knee pain guide – which will give you 5 expert tips to put a stop to knee pain at home – by visiting here: https://ht-physio.co.uk/knee-pain-guide-download/

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If you’re over-50 with a painful problem in the Farnham, Surrey area, you can learn more about how Will Harlow and HT Physio can help you overcome a painful problem here: https://ht-physio.co.uk/

**Any information in this video should not be used as a substitute for individual medical advice. Please seek advice from your local healthcare professional before taking action on the information in this video.** Full policy here: https://ht-physio.co.uk/injury-disclaimer/

if you’re suffering with stiff knees that are worse in the morning then don’t go anywhere because I’m just about to show you one great exercise that can help you to relieve it if you don’t know who I am my name is will harow and I’m the over 50s specialist physio here at HT physio INF farum today I’m going to be showing you one incredible exercise to help you fix knee stiffness now knee stiffness is really common it’s often caused by arthritis but one of the best things about having it is that it’s often treatable with the right exercises so I’m going to show you one of my favorite exercises to treat this problem in just a moment but before I do I just need to let you know that this is not going to be suitable for everyone do get checked out by your doctor before you give it a try and if it causes you any pain just avoid it anyway let’s have a look at the exercise now today I’m going to show you a highly effective exercise to help you overcome knee stiffness now in my opinion everybody needs 120° of knee Flex and knee flexion is when you bend your knee so I’m going to show you what 120° of knee flexion looks like on my knee if I bend it to here that’s 90° so 120 is there okay so if you can bend your knee to this point you’re doing pretty well but many of the people I see they can only get it to 90 they can only get it to 100 and that restricts them significantly in many different things that they do now if you don’t have 120° of knee Bend you can’t do stairs comfortably you can’t cycle you can’t swim you can’t even step over thresholds without having a problem and that is a massive disability for many many people and the problem is many surgeons will tell their patients oh if we can get you to 90° after your surgery then that’s a good result and the fact of the matter is you’re still struggling at 90° so if you don’t have 120° of knee Bend you’re finding it difficult to go downstairs it hurts your knee to get in and out of a car I’m going to show you how to fix it and this is a great exercise that you can do from your bed at home just using the effects of gravity to help you bend your knee so to make this exercise work you need to lie on your back nice and comfortably on your bed like this and I’m going to be using my left leg just so you can see this exercise easily this exercise is suitable for a wide range of Ages and abilities so keep your head relaxed throughout we’re going to bring this leg up to about here and we’re going to hold behind the knee like this and if you only have 90° you’re probably going to be stuck here if you have 100 you might be stuck here 110 here okay now all you’re going to do is you’re going to find how far you can bend your knee until you get stuck and then you’re just going to slightly straighten and gently just drop it back to that stiff position so you can see what I’m doing here I’m going from slightly extended down to my maximum so down and down and down and we’re almost like dropping that heel down with the effects of gravity into the stiffness in the knee now because this isn’t a weightbearing movement what this is doing is it’s allowing gravity to just force The Joint into a bit more flexion without putting stress on the knee so for most people this exercise is safe and effective but obviously get checked out for your personal circumstances aners now if I wasn’t resisting there I can get my knee down to here so for me to do this exercise would look something like this so I’m just bouncing into resistance using gravity to help me and that bounce is helping to improve the mobility of the knee joint so don’t worry if you start here it’s actually perfect for you if this is where you start and you’re just going to gently bounce into resistance and what you’ll find is if you do two or 3 minutes of that in a row you’ll go probably about an extra 5° over the time that you’re doing it that’s typically what I see with my clients and if you do that day in and day out a couple of times a day that 5° becomes permanent then you build on it with another 5° then you build on it with another 5° and before you know it you can get from 90 all the way up to 120 in the space of a couple of months it’s definitely worth the effort it really really helps to improve knee Mobility do it several times a day and it will make a massive difference so that’s my one incredible exercise to help you fix knee stiffness I hope you found this video useful if you found it useful and you’ve learned something do drop a comment below and let me know because it does help me to improve our future videos and if you want to get more from me you can pick up a copy of my book it’s got loads more tips inside to help you fix knee problems it’s called thriving Beyond 50 and you can find it on Amazon using the link below anyway thank you so much for watching I appreciate your time and I’ll speak to you on the next video