Top 4 Fridays! 4 Exercises for Knee Health and Durability

Knee Health & Durability

I'm currently training a competitive Jiu-Jitsu athlete who is dealing with some knee (meniscus) discomfort *only* when walking downstairs. No other movement pattern, exercise, or position bothers this athlete.

As a strength coach, my goal is to help you become as strong and as healthy as possible. More often than not, we (myself included) tend to lean toward the strength end of things since it's literally in our title. However, if we can't keep our athletes healthy enough to compete and remain active, then we technically aren't doing our job.

In my experience, the coaches with a large toolbox and a variety of skills typically get the job done. The coaches who tend to only swing one hammer often fade away quickly.

Keeping your athletes healthy and durable is a surefire way to help them stay in the game, remain active, and continue to do the things that they love. Strength―among many other physical qualities―is simply one piece of the overall puzzle.

To that end, you should never be afraid to consult with respected colleagues either. It's truly about helping your athletes stack wins and succeed so it's important to focus on collaboration over competition with your colleagues.

My guy Dr. Ziad Dahdul (The Teflon Don) from @ignitephyzio is a good friend, a true gem of a human being, an ACL/knee expert, and is always down to collaborate and share his ideas. He and I chatted about said athlete, and then he discussed some exercise interventions that may be helpful to kick things back into high gear.

The goal is to begin with a knees-over-toes isometrics to provide an analgesic effect so that we can "calm shit down and then build stuff up" a la @greglehman. Then, we want to dose in eccentrics and external loading as tolerated.

Put the health of your athlete first and everything else will take care of itself.

Exercise progressions:

Elevated 1-Leg Knee Over Toes Iso
Eccentric Elevated 1-Leg Knee Over Toes
Elevated 1-Leg Knee Over Toes Tap-Down
DB Elevated 1-Leg Knee Over Toes Tap-Down

#MattDiscussesKnees #knees #jiujitsu #strong #health - reposted with permission from @matthewibrahim_

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