Can the Bar Method help me with bad knees?

Knee problems come in many varieties, including:

• injury to a tendon,
• injury to a ligament,
• arthritis or worn knee cartilage,
• chondromalaciapatellae, erosion of the cartilage in the knee cap, and
• IT band syndrome: rubbing of the IT band against the knee.

If you have any of these injuries, it’s important to see your doctor for diagnosis and treatment before you exercise.

After your doctor’s okay, the Bar Method can help stabilize your knees by strengthening and aligning the muscles around them. The Bar Method’s non-impact, highly controlled leg work is similar to what you’d get in physical therapy, only jumped up a notch or two in difficulty level.

For example, one Bar Method move called the “bend-stretch” lubricates and helps regenerate the cartilage in your knees. Another leg exercise called thigh-work, a version of the classic squat seen in gyms, gives you stronger glutes, quads, hamstrings and calf muscles, all rolled into one. The squat also enhances coordination among these muscle groups.

Recent research overwhelmingly supports the squat as the safest and best exercise for rehabbing and strengthening your knees. Four studies of the squat as a rehab and strengthening technique, which were carried out in the US and the UK from 1989 to 2000 exhaustively tested the knee ligaments of groups performing the squat and other groups performing leg extensions.

The groups that used the squat for training and rehab ended up with stronger knees and greater knee stability than those that used seated leg extensions. These studies also determined that the squat did not strain participants’ knee ligaments, and in some cases actually tightened them.

Two more comparative studies performed in the UK and Sweden found that the squat wins hands down over leg extensions when it comes to training competitive athletes.

The Bar Method’s version of the squat uses the bar to help you keep your torso vertical rather than having it lean diagonally forward. This difference acts to make your quads more elastic, increase the range of motion in your hips, and give your legs a streamlined look. So if your knees are bothering you, start out by doing the Bar Method’s thigh section with less bend in your knees (see photo left). Then, as your leg muscles become stronger and more elastic, you can go deeper. Avoid bending your knees beyond 90 degrees unless you’re completely healed and get your doctor’s okay to go deeper.

Also, if your knees hurt while bending in a turned-out position, stick with parallel legs (as shown right) until your thigh muscles become more evenly balanced in strength and elasticity.

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