Do you have knee pain? Would you trust your knees with suddenly changing direction? What about with hopping and jumping?
Then make sure you read this incredibly important blog as I’m going to show you 3 advanced change of direction drills you need to achieve to ensure your knee is 100% ready for getting back to sport.
Knee pain is incredibly common for young and old. It really limits your mobility, can make it hard to get in and out of a chair, hard to use stairs and a challenge all round.
The problem is though for many, even after the acute pain goes, they still can’t 100% trust their knees.
It doesn’t have to be like this.
Now let’s get into it.
Advanced knee exercise number 1:
Explosive crab walking
Crab walking is a really popular exercise at the moment but it has way more potential than just doing a slow sideways shuffle. We love using crab walking because it gets your glutes going which is super important for knee pain and it combines it all in a nice squatted position which means you have to concentrate on multiple things all at once.
But what you really want to get your crab walking to, is the point where it is an explosive, almost jumping movement to best stimulate moments when you have to quickly step to the side. We prefer to have the mini band down on your forefoot to maximise the glutes. Then you want to quickly drive out to the side with a quick catch up step. The same principles as crab walking apply – don’t let your feet flick together and don’t drag your feet.
Advanced knee exercise number 2:
Triple zig zag hops
Hopping is a really important aspect of knee control and running. Realistically if you run you need to have a good hop. We never want to see knees rolling in – not only will that flare up any knee cap pain but it will make you more at risk of doing meniscus damage and even rupturing your ACL. Zig zag hopping is a great way to really challenge that control as you propel yourself side to side.
To do this have a line on the ground. You want to stand on one leg on one side of the line. As far as which side of the line to stand on you could argue either side has it’s benefits for either brute strength or control. Then you will hop in a zig zag motion 3 times across the line. Every hop needs to be well balanced on the landing without the knee drifting in or excessive overbalance through the trunk.
Advanced knee exercise number 3:
Step off and hop
This is a classic late stage ACL exercise. It really tests out all the control elements of your knee in a more stressful situation. But I must stress this is very much so an advanced exercise.
To do this one you need to be standing on a step. The height of the step we want to aim for is at least 50cm. Standing on the step you then jump off it landing on the affected leg then immediately doing a hop. We like to change it up a bit by then calling out a direction to hop in – so you’ll land, we call out right and you will hop to the right. This is such a challenging exercise on so many levels but we have helped heaps of patients get right to this point and ultimate success.
If you’d like to get these results too then click HERE to book online or give us a call on (07) 4999 9773 so we can get you back to doing what you want to do and what you love.