Knee Strengthening Program, first level.

Level One This is the exercise that got rid of my swelling, eased the pain, and is in the process of making my thigh muscles stronger than before. Sit on the floor / hard bed / chair with a footstool with your legs straight out in front of you with your heels resting on something that allows your legs to be straight and not flexed. Contract your quadriceps. Remember that your quadriceps is the large thigh muscle on the front of the leg just above the patella. Imagine that you are pulling your patella toward your body. Feel the vastus medialis--you should be able to put your fingertips on it as you contract and feel even a slight flexion. Your goal is to feel it get hard when you do that. If you haven't exercised in twenty years, it's not going to get very hard today, but you should feel SOME movement under there. If you do, that's great. If you don't, you probably aren't understanding what to do. Release it and try again. Watch your kneecap and try to pull it higher on your leg, or put your hand on your leg above your kneecap and feel for some movement. Still no results? Think about lifting your foot (just your foot, not your knee) up an inch. I'll bet that causes a contraction. Keep trying till you can feel something there. You'll soon get the hang of doing this contraction on command. If you just can't do this, try the other exercise four paragraphs down. Contract the muscle, hold for a count of six seconds, relax for three seconds. Contract four times. That's one set. I misremembered how many times to do this and did them a LOT the first day and the second day I stayed with that number. Your goal will be to work up to doing more contractions, and more sets. I'm now doing twenty contractions for each set, twenty sets per day, and my knees are just as happy as they could be. You're probably supposed to do these with both legs at the same time. I did them separately so I could concentrate on doing it. I did first the vastus medialis in one thigh, then the other, then came back to the first thigh for the other side of the quadriceps--the vastus lateralis, on the thigh to the outside of the patella--and then did both of those. Now I'm doing them together, which still doesn't guarantee that they're working equally hard, but there's another exercise to do later which will tell me whether I'm working them both the same amount. For people who couldn't do the above exercise, or didn't much enjoy doing it, there is always this one: Same seating position, but under your knees you place a rolled up towel. Now press down on the towel with your knees. Doesn't require a lot of concentration and not particularly spectacular control, so it's a little easier to get the hang of it than the towelless version. Same number of contractions and same number of sets. So, to summarize: Contract, hold for six seconds, relax for three seconds. Do three to four contractions Do fifteen to twenty sets per day Continue doing these for the rest of your life and keep that quadriceps toned. Garrick doesn't say to increase the number of contractions per set, but I'm doing 20 contractions (sometimes more) in 20 sets per day. I hope that's not excessive. Next level will be in the next post.