IC-Knees: 5-day Pilates/Yoga plan for knee recovery

[CBDB]

🤕 Well, a niggling sharp pain in my knee on Sunday made me go down the rabbit hole of learning all about the differences between using Pilates and Yoga for recovery.

📆 The result was a post yesterday healthunlocked.com/strength... and a quickly put together 5-day knee workout to strengthen my knees, whilst pausing my running. Plan is to return to running on Saturday, by which time my knee should have recovered and hopefully I’ll have added extra strength to it, as well.

🪑 So today, I did the gentle introduction to knee work through a chair-based Pilates session.

Pilates for Very Painful Knees: a 20 Minutes of Chair based exercise for Knee Arthritis by UK based Rachel, who runs the channel named “The Girl with the Pilates Mat” (20 min)

youtu.be/qcQfrGeDqEc(Not working as expected?)

👵 It’s a great seemingly gentle session, perfect for people whose knees seem to just not be meant to be kneeling on a mat, or bending 180 degrees as in Yoga’s child’s pose. I belong to this group and ever since giving birth to my now 16 year old son I have had difficulties with any floor work. Im getting better, though, and I’ve been inspired by someone on this forum suggesting that she is more nimble now in her 60s than she has ever been in her 40s! So there’s hope for my stiff knees ... and all stiff knees out there!

🦵And as gentle this exercise seemed, oh could I feel my thighs, calves and legs afterwards. These exercises also let me notice that one of my thighs (and possibly knees) is stronger than the other. Unsurprisingly it is the weaker leg which had the pain that got me to go on this (actually quite fascinating) knee recovery journey in the first place.

🧘‍♀️So next on my knee journey are some more workouts from different instructors, most Pilates but I also found Adrienne’s Yoga for sensitive knees. So I will also get to know Adrienne, who many of the runners on this forum are raving about!

Happy workout everyone and for those on the IC, happy recovery!

[Roxdog]

That's amazingly well organised of you!

As a knee arthritis sufferer, my knees have generally been much stronger since I started running, but have been niggly in the last few days. Some of those exercises look familiar and they do work!

Take care.

[CBDB Administrator Graduate Gold in reply to Roxdog]

Yes, I’ve now done two different workouts for knees, and they probably do have similarities. But it’s nice to have different workout videos.

The chair based one is an interesting one, as it adapts many exercises I know from lying or sitting on the mat to sitting on a chair.

Good to hear about knees getting stronger from running. I could use stronger knees. I don’t have the best of knees, although never had an injury, and my bad knees never were an issue with running. But kneeling.... 😱🥺🤣

[Timotea]

Brilliant! I have dodgy knees so will be trying this! Thank you for posting

[CBDB Administrator Graduate Gold in reply to Timotea]

Nice 👍🏽!