Must Do Exercises to Prepare Your Knees for Hiking
Audra Lowe: Whether you’re on a stroll with the family or preparing for a long hike, you definitely want to make sure that your knees are ready for a journey. Nothing worse than going on that hike and your knees gives out. Andréa shows us three must do exercises to prevent knee and hip pain in today’s getting fit.
Andréa: I'm speaking with the U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin for her vision of a healthy and fit nation, she loves to hike, so you got to find an activity that you love to do that it will get you outdoors or in a gym to help you keep fit and healthy.
But when you're hiking whether it’s a park or the National Parks like the Grand Canyon, there's three exercises you should really do to help strengthen that space around the knee and prevent knee and hip pain.
First exercise is a front lunge. You want to focus on great form pulling in those abs. keep your knee behind the toe and the back way, knee under the hip. Press up and down and try for a set of 20 on each side.
The next exercise is step ups. Now you can do this outside on a rock, on a park bench, or even on your coffee table. Just remember to step all the way up and through the ball of the foot and slowly return to the ground.
Again, 20 wraps on each side, everyday will strengthen those muscles around the knee joint. Now going downhill is really the hardest part about hiking. You may think side stepping is a good way to do it but your ankle tends to be a vulnerable joint. So we really want to keep you forward. That means you need a lot of strength from those hamstrings to slow the thigh bone going into the front of the knee and creating some knee pain. So hamstrings curls are your next exercise.
Lift your hips up off the ground and lower. As you get stronger, place your feet on the ball. Lift your hips and then work on slowly rolling the ball out and in. 20 repetitions of those hamstrings curls will really strengthen the back of the thigh. So if you're hiking the great parks or your own backyard, remember, three exercises to really strengthen up the knee joint. Step ups, lunges and hamstring curls. Enjoy your hike. That’s where I'm headed.
Audra Lowe: Thanks a lot Andréa. It looks so pretty good. I think I feel like taking a hike myself. It wouldn’t be the first time somebody told me to take a hike. If you guys want to try some of those moves and a lot of others including some easy Bollywood dance steps, just head over to our website, BetterTV.com. And then click on the videos. We’ll be right back.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services