{"id":7477,"date":"2019-06-28T06:55:10","date_gmt":"2019-06-28T06:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/simplyhealth.today\/?p=7477"},"modified":"2021-04-14T20:10:24","modified_gmt":"2021-04-14T20:10:24","slug":"14-effortless-ways-to-strengthen-your-knee-ligaments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/simplyhealth.today\/14-effortless-ways-to-strengthen-your-knee-ligaments\/","title":{"rendered":"14 Effortless Ways to Strengthen Your Knee Ligaments"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Most of us know just how useful and important it can be to train our muscles. Many of us, therefore, spend large amounts of time in the gym, curling, pushing, and throwing weights around. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But while this will help you to get a superhero-esque physique, using weights on its own won\u2019t necessarily protect you against injury. In fact, if you train incorrectly, the gym can actually make you more <\/em>likely to develop a number of complaints and injuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is especially true of ligaments and especially true of knee ligaments<\/a>. This is why knee problems are among the most common complaints that keep people out of the gym and among the most common complaints that affect the aging population. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the following few paragraphs then, we will take a look at some measures you can take to strengthen your knee ligaments and prevent injury, while also improving your performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1 Train the Ligaments<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We think of building muscle <\/a>in order to make it stronger and to help avoid injury. What we often don\u2019t realize though, is that muscle is just one part of the body that can be trained. In fact, pretty much every part of the body responds to training (which we would technically refer to as \u2018adapting to stress\u2019) \u2013 including even the brain, nervous system, and bones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tendons and ligaments are no different, and therefore any movement that takes the knee through its range of motion will help to reduce your likelihood of injury and strengthen the area. Examples include lunges, leg extension machines, squats and more. Anything that either extends or retracts the knee joint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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2 Train the Muscle<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Just as you should train the ligaments, these movements <\/a>will also help you to train the muscles surrounding the knee. While this doesn\u2019t directly affect the ligaments, what it does do is to help guide the knee through the correct motion and stabilize it in position. This, in turn, means that you are significantly less likely to experience a sprain or strain or to hurt it in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All the same, exercises that will strengthen the ligaments in the knee, will also help to strengthen the muscles. Your aim is to build the hip flexors, extensors, abductors, and adductors, along with the quads, hamstrings, calves, and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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3 Take it Slow<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Both your tendons <\/a>and your ligaments are what we call connective tissue. Their job is to help the muscles to exert force against hinges in the joints, in order to enable free movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem is that the connective tissue receives significantly less blood and nutrients as compared with muscle. That\u2019s because tendon and ligament have a much lower comparative blood supply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, whereas it will take just eight days to begin seeing structural changes to muscle, it can actually take 2 months to see the same changes occur to the tendons and ligaments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the worst things you can do then is to accelerate in strength very quickly and start lifting extremely heavyweights. Take it slow!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly important, is making sure that you take ample time in-between workouts. While your muscles might have overcome the DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) and feel ready to go to town again, you may find that your tendons and ligaments need a bit longer. Generally, it is advised that you keep 48 hours between workouts for the connective tissue to fully recover. Training other body parts are fair game though!<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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4 Train for Balance and Mobility<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Another tip for strengthening <\/a>the ligaments is to make sure you train for balance. This means that you need to think about the balance between the different muscles in your body specifically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The biggest mistake that many of us will make, is to spend time in the gym training only our \u2018mirror muscles\u2019 \u2013 the muscles that look great in front of the mirror. Doing this will result in us creating a great looking physique, but one that is ultimately less functional and that might result in injury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ligaments don\u2019t attach joints directly to muscle \u2013 that is the job of tendons. But if the tendons are pulling on the joints all day at different forces, then this applies strain to the ligaments too, which can make injury more likely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So make sure you\u2019re training those abductors and not just adductors (try throwing in some sumo squats) and make sure that you loosing up your hamstrings to avoid a whole range of issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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5 Consume Vitamin C<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Vitamin C<\/a> can help to improve our production of collagen. Collagen is one of the main constituents of ligaments. As you might imagine then, consuming more vitamin C means that you get more collagen in your body, which in turn means you build more, thicker, stronger, ligaments. This helps to reduce your chance of injury and to increase the amount of force you can exert through your limbs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are many other aspects of your nutrition that also play a key role. Calcium is similarly important for example, and so too is protein. Protein is what the body uses in order to build almost all tissues, by breaking it down into amino acids and then recombining those into new materials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Performing air squats, incorporating different types of leg exercise, and developing flexibility in your spine and legs are all important methods for improving flexibility and mobility. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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6 Try Overcoming Isometrics<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Overcoming isometrics <\/a>are exercises that involve pushing or pulling against an immovable force. That means you\u2019re using maximum effort, but the joint is remaining static. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are two reasons that this is useful for us. For one, it will allow you to build strength and resilience in areas of the body that are normally very hard to train. For example, old-time strongman Maxick recommends pushing the side of the foot against a wall or similar resistance using the lateral flexion of the knee. This is something you simply can\u2019t train safely any other way, but which could help to prevent injury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other benefit of this type of training is that it lets you exert more force than you can lift. This is a good way to allow the tendons to take on more resistance than the muscle is capable of. That can then help the tendons to develop more additional strength than they otherwise could \u2013 and the same goes for the ligaments to a lesser extent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Try locking the bar in position in the squat rack, then push upward against it. Hold maximum effort for six seconds and then release \u2013 that\u2019s one rep. Try not to train with this kind of move for more than 10 minutes a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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7 Improve Your Gait and Footwear<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Having the right gait <\/a>can make a big difference to your knee health. The problem is that many of us have learned to walk and run incorrectly, owing to the use of large shoes that include massive heels and overly spongey soles. These things combined mean we run with a heel-to-toe motion, rather than using the ball of our foot as we would do running in the wild.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a mistake as it essentially means your knee is unable to compress and thereby absorb impact the way it is designed to do. Wearing minimalist shoes, therefore, is one good way to train yourself out of this habit and to help improve the way you walk and run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keep in mind however that you need to ease yourself back into this \u2013 after decades of walking using the wrong gait, you can injure yourself if you simply swap back!<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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8 Try Long Sets<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In the gym, a set is the full sequence of 8-15 exercises you perform before resting and starting again. Those are regular sets, but if you extend the length to say 20, 30, or even 50 by using extremely light weights, then this can be a brilliant way to strengthen and even help to recover damaged ligaments and tendons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This works partly because it trains the leg to return to the correct movement patterns, and partly because it helps you to flush the area with blood<\/a>. The longer the set, the more blood gets pumped to the area, and the more this can help your muscles to recover and your knee to strengthen.
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