Video:How to Protect Your Knees During Lower Body Exercises
with Keith PaineProtect your knees during lower body exercises to ensure that you build strength properly and prevent injury. Watch this video for tips that will keep your knees safe during your workout.
Transcript:How to Protect Your Knees During Lower Body Exercises
Hi, this is Keith from Nimble Fitness for About.com, and we’re going to talk about ways to protect your knees during lower-body exercises.
Exercise Muscles Surrounding Knees
As most of you might be aware, knee injuries are common during exercise. In order to protect them, we want to strengthen the muscles around the knees and we want to try and keep the knees aligned during any exercise that you’re doing. If you see your knees bending in too far, or coming out too far they are not going to be as stable as they could be. As we go into squat here, I’m careful to keep my knees aligned over the feet and basically hips width apart.
Align the Knees and Back During Exercise
Ok if we’re going to lift something heavy, we’re going to make sure we have alignment through the knees and also the lower back. If I’m bending down to pick something up, the first thing I’m concentrating on is stability through the lower spine. So that lower spine is going to stay strong. Again it’s important to make sure that your knees stay aligned as you’re picking up a heavy weight. So as I bend forward, the knees stay over the feet, my back is strong and I press back up to standing position.
Knees Should Not Bend Over Feet
Ok we’re going to move on to some strength exercises now. Antonio is going to demonstrate a squat. Careful to slide the hips back, he’s not letting his knees come in too far over his feet. As you get more comfortable with this exercise you can start to take it a little bit lower, just making sure to keep that spine long. Thanks for watching, to learn more visit About.com
