Are winter chills making your knees feel stiff?
The cold weather can contribute to you feeling tight in the legs and stiff in your knees. But the good news is that doing a few basic exercises can help to free up those knees and legs and give you back the mobility you want.
Today I am going to show you 3 exercises that will help you get rid of your leg stiffness.
We often get patients come in reporting their legs, and especially their knees feel stiff, and often achy. They notice this is worse in winter. There’s lots of factors that contribute to this feeling of stiffness during the cold weather. If your muscles are cold, they won’t be able to stretch as well. If the weather isn’t conducive to getting out and about, you might not be moving your joints and legs as much, resulting in decreased blood flow, increased swelling/fluid in your joints and weakness in your muscles. Often weak muscles feel tight because they are working harder to do the job you want them to do. All of this will make you feel like your leg muscles are tight and your knees are stiff to move. With some simple exercises you can work your knees and the muscles in your legs.
This will help by:
- Getting increased blood flow in your muscles
- Warming up the muscles, which then results in the ability of the muscles to stretch more
- Shifting any fluid you are retaining in your lower limbs and joints and ultimately getting those muscles stronger so that they find it easier to move your knees joints.
Check out these 3 exercises that can help you get moving and stay moving!
- Heel Slides
- Knee Extensions
- Squats or Squats to ChairBonus Exercise – Hamstring/Hip Flexor Mobility
Doing these exercises even once a day will make your knees feel heaps better, for longer.
I’m Coby from Miami Physiotherapy. If you want to get up, get stronger, live pain-free, and live your best life, book in a session with us!
Thanks for reading our blog!
