3 Options for Knee OA Exercise

There are many different ways you can strengthen your knees . . .

While we do know that exercise of some sort is better than no exercise with knee osteoarthritis, there are various ways of going about improving your strength. Home strengthening programs, gym strengthening programs, yoga, aquatic exercise and others may all be beneficial to the health, strength, and control of your knee, and thus important in controlling your symptoms and increasing your activities. It is likely that all of these activities contribute to strength, mobility, joint control, balance, and posture in ways that improve your knee osteoarthritis.

In fact, a recent study just published in the Current Treatment Options in Rheumatology summarizes our current knowledge on exercise in hip and knee OA this way:

“Health care practitioners and patients should be encouraged to incorporate exercise therapy into treatment plans and can be assured of the safety profile and likelihood of improvement in important patient outcomes. Since no single exercise therapy program shows vastly superior benefit, patient preference and contextual factors should be central to the shared decision-making process when selecting and individualising appropriate exercise therapy prescriptions.”

In other words, there are many different ways you can go about successfully exercising your Knee OA. There is not one magic program. If you can’t afford a gym membership or a knee osteoarthritis class, then those exercise modes won’t be of much use to you! If you are not into Yoga, don’t bother. If you don’t like pools, maybe find something else. In our experience, what will be important is that you sufficiently challenge your knee to gain a strengthening response, you don’t do so much that you aggravate your knee, and you find something that you will enjoy and stick with as a lifestyle.