Many individuals desire to lose weight to enhance their physical appearance. However, for those with knee pain, initiating an exercise program can be daunting. Decreasing your weight requires a combination of dietary changes and exercise. If you haven’t exercised in a long time because of knee pain, there are low-impact ways to sweat that won’t make your knees hurt even more. Choosing the right activities is critical when losing weight with knee pain. Fortunately, several low-impact exercises can aid in weight loss without exacerbating knee pain. This article explores various exercises and strategies to help you achieve your weight loss goals while protecting your knees.
Understanding Low-Impact Exercise
Low-impact exercise reduces stress on your joints while still offering a challenging and engaging workout. Low impact exercise is a form of exercise that reduces the stress or pressure on your joints. This type of exercise is good for individuals with joint pain or those newer to working out. It can also be a cross-training option for athletes who want to stay active on recovery days. It’s essential to understand what constitutes low-impact activity and how it benefits individuals with knee problems.
Benefits of Weight Loss for Knee Osteoarthritis
Weight loss can significantly alleviate symptoms of knee osteoarthritis. Weight loss is also something you can do yourself that doesn’t require a trip to the doctor’s office. Every patient is different, and while weight loss may positively impact one person, it may not offer the same results for another. That said, losing weight could give you relief. The more weight you lose, the more benefits your knee osteoarthritis will get, the Arthritis Care & Research study found. People with knee osteoarthritis feel better when they lose their excess weight. It takes less effort to be active in the day - to walk, lift yourself out of the chair, and the like.
How Weight Loss Improves Symptoms
Exactly why this happens wasn’t studied, but exercise in general helps lubricate your joints and generate more beneficial nutrients and synovial fluid to protect them, notes the Arthritis Foundation. Plus, building up the muscles around the knee takes some pressure off the joints, says Genie Lieberman, director of the Gloria Drummond Physical Rehabilitation Institute at the Boca Raton Regional Hospital in Florida. Weight loss also leads to decreased blood pressure, fewer unhealthy blood fats, more good cholesterol, and better balance for blood sugar levels, among other improvements for common problems.
Effective Low-Impact Exercises
Several exercises can help you lose weight without putting excessive strain on your knees.
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Swimming
Swimming incorporates elements of cardio, strength, and flexibility. At the same time, the buoyancy of the water reduces stress on your body by helping to support your weight. Swimming is a non-weight-bearing exercise because you become nearly weightless in the pool. You also use different muscles than for dry-land exercises, giving you a chance to expand your range of motion. A basic freestyle stroke engages muscles throughout your upper and lower body - especially your shoulders, triceps, pecs, and quads - and your core.
Some other swimming strokes you may be interested in trying are:
- Breaststroke
- Backstroke
- Butterfly
Different strokes emphasize different muscle groups, but all are great forms of exercise. You can experiment and find the type of stroke you enjoy, as well as the ones that challenge you.
Walking
Walking puts less strain on your knees than running or jogging. Walking on a surface such as a track or a trail can put even less stress on your joints than walking on concrete. Focus on getting your power from your legs and hips. Keep your abdominals engaged and push the ground behind you to accelerate. Short brisk walks. Taking short walks as opposed to long ones avoids excessive pressure on the joints. You can alternate between 1 to 3 minutes of walking at a faster speed with 30 to 60 seconds of walking at a slower recovery speed.
Water Walking
Walking can also be low-impact, though you may want to try water walking to start, which puts even less strain on the knees.
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Cycling
Whether you opt for a stationary ride in a cycling class or head out on a traditional bicycle, cycling is an intense, low impact exercise. You can start cycling with little investment, especially if you already have access to a stationary bike. Shifting into higher gears or, if you are outdoors, taking a route with more inclines can increase the intensity of your cycling workout. You can also decrease the intensity by shifting into lower gears or taking a flatter route.
A 2019 study found that indoor cycling may improve:
- Aerobic capacity
- Blood pressure
- Lipid profile
- Body composition
The researchers also found that these benefits can be achieved without dieting.
Rowing
Rowing is another exercise that provides a total body strength and cardio workout. This non-weight-bearing exercise is an effective option for those with joint concerns. You’ll need access to a rowing machine, so this will most likely be a gym-based workout. Rowers are also available to purchase at various price points. While seated, you place your feet on footpads, pull the bar, and propel yourself backward, simulating boat rowing with little impact on the joints.
Elliptical Trainer
An elliptical trainer has pedals that move along an oval-shaped track (either back and forth or up and down), creating a fluid motion that saves you from hitting the ground and putting pressure on your joints. Most elliptical trainers also have handles or poles you move back and forth for an upper-body workout (like a cross-country ski machine). You need good balance to use an elliptical machine.
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Stationary Bike
A stationary bike (also called an indoor cycling machine) has bicycle pedals and a seat with a back. The machines come in two styles: upright (like a regular bicycle) or recumbent (which has back support).
Pool Exercises
These include swimming laps, water aerobics, or walking in waist-deep water. The water keeps you buoyant, takes pressure off your joints, and provides resistance (which helps build muscle and bone strength). You’re free to do so much more in water than you would on land.
Skating
The side-to-side motion from skating offers a counter-stimulus to the muscles and joints of your lower body, which most often move in the front-to-back, or sagittal, plane. Your legs work differently when you’re skating than when you’re walking, running, or cycling. Skating can be a great way to work your glutes, hip abductors, and inner thighs.
Tai Chi
Tai chi will help you function better, especially with hip or knee pain. This low-impact martial art is not a cardio workout, but it has many benefits. It involves a series of slow, choreographed movements; you gradually shift your weight from one pose to another as you focus on body sensations and deep breathing. Tai chi has been shown to improve balance, flexibility, range of motion, and reflexes. It’s also been shown to reduce falls by up to 60%.
Important Stretches
- Standing quadriceps stretch: Stand up straight, feet together, holding the back of a chair. Bend your right knee, grasp your right foot, and pull it behind you, toward your buttocks, until you feel a stretch in the front of your thigh.
- Pretzel stretch: Lie on your back with your left knee bent and the left foot on the floor. Rest your right ankle on your left leg near your left knee. Your right knee should point to the side. Grasp the back of your left thigh with both hands and slowly pull it toward you until you feel a stretch in your right hip and buttock.
Combining Diet and Exercise
Combining the right diet plan with appropriate exercise, along with learning tools that change ingrained behaviors, is the best way to lose significant weight, according to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI). Losing weight slowly is best for the body, the NHLBI says. A reasonable time period is six months to drop 10 percent of your body weight. Definitely approach weight loss with both a diet plan and a fitness plan.
Strategies for Successful Weight Loss
Here are six ways to help you succeed as you proceed with your weight loss efforts:
1. Physical Therapy
If you haven’t exercised in a long time, if you have other serious conditions like heart disease, or if moving your joints brings severe pain - or even just the fear of pain - ask your doctor to refer you to a physical therapist. Physical therapy offers a challenge and many rewards, such as increased range of motion and decreased pain. These specialists can ease you slowly into appropriate movements. It can help people to have a structured program in the beginning, so they can feel more confident that they won’t overdo it,” Lieberman says. Without a physical therapist, for example, you might not realize that exercising your legs with weights, like with the machines you find in a gym, is not good for knee osteoarthritis. It’s fine to do straight leg raises in a chair, which strengthen the quads above the knees. But it can injure the joint to push the leg against resistance. A physical therapist understands your pain constraints and will give you exercises designed to strengthen weaknesses and balance out the pain in your knees.
2. Water Workouts
Whether you work with a therapist or on your own, the best way to begin an exercise program that you’ll stick with is to move without pain. For people with knee osteoarthritis, “that means swimming, swimming, swimming,” Lieberman says. Moving in water - which includes pool aerobics or swimming laps - allows the joint to flex with no gravity or weight against it. After you’ve built confidence and a bit of muscular heft, you can go on to other workouts, such as fast walking outside or on a treadmill, or using an elliptical at a moderate speed. Listen to your body after you do any workout,” Lieberman says. If you have pain that lasts more than a couple of hours after, stop and speak to your physician or physical therapist.
3. Protein-Packed Breakfasts
Americans are good at eating enough protein and fiber for lunch and dinner: a salad with grilled chicken, a turkey sandwich with a side of slaw, meatloaf with veggies. But breakfast is where many fall short, says Lauren Harris-Pincus, RDN, a registered dietitian nutritionist in Green Brook, New Jersey. Bagels, croissants - even healthier oatmeal - have nowhere near the 20 to 35 grams of protein per meal that are recommended and that keep us feeling full, she says. Harris-Pincus, author of The Protein-Packed Breakfast Club, says pairing protein with fiber makes for the best meals, especially when you are trying to lose weight. Her go-to: overnight oats, which she makes by filling a jar with oats, plain Greek yogurt (or nut or cow’s milk), a tablespoon of flavored protein powder, chia seeds, and fruit, then letting it soak overnight in the fridge. By switching up the fruits and the flavor of the powder (one day it’s pear-coconut, another banana-vanilla), she gets variety in her daily oatmeal. Eggs offer another good protein-fiber breakfast choice. Make a vegetable omelet, or pair scrambled eggs with high-fiber berries like raspberries or blackberries.
4. Emotional Eating
Dietitians used to focus on giving clients information, such as advising them on which eating plans were best. Now many spend as much time helping clients understand the emotions they bring to food, which is crucial for successful weight loss. People eat because they’re happy, stressed, bored, angry, or in pain, not always because they’re hungry,” Harris-Pincus says. “We work to understand what motivates them to eat, which is very individualized.” Of course, an appropriate eating plan is also important. “Any diet you can’t do long-term is not worth doing,” she says. Some of the best diets for weight loss are the Mediterranean diet and the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH), both of which are full of healthy foods like vegetables and fruits, lean proteins, whole grains, and healthy fats like nuts, seeds, and olive oil. Harris-Pincus cautions, however, that if you are trying to lose weight, you must curb the portions of high-fat foods on these plans, like oils and avocados.
5. Staying Motivated
Losing weight is a marathon. And like any marathon, you need to stay motivated when you can’t yet see the finish line. As with any project that takes a while, there will be highs and lows. A good way to get through the troughs is to remind yourself of what you’re hoping to accomplish, including less knee pain, Lieberman says. Lieberman likens weight loss to redecorating your home. “When you redecorate, you’re going to have covered furniture that you can’t sit on, the mess of painting your walls, and other discomfort and aggravations,” she says. But you go through it because eventually you’ll have a beautiful home. And if you stick with your diet and exercise plans, you’ll have your desired body weight.
6. Find a Buddy
Even when people with knee osteoarthritis know that healthy lifestyle habits will help them, it can be hard to stay on track.
Additional Tips
- Start out with a few minutes and the lowest amount of resistance, gradually increasing your time.
- Before starting any of these exercises, get the okay from your doctor or physical therapist.
- If you’re starting at zero and you do a minute, that’s progress; and then do a minute and a half, and then two minutes.
- When walking, wear snug-fitting walking shoes with good support.
- No matter which of these machines you use, the payoff of exercise is well worth it.
- Even small increases in moderate-intensity physical activity provide health benefits. Some of them can happen quickly, such as reduced feelings of anxiety, reduced blood pressure, greater insulin sensitivity, and improvements in sleep.