00:00If you haven't had hamstring surgery, so, say not an ACL, you've just had, say, arthroscope
00:05for a meniscus or something like that, or it's a swollen arthritic knee, I would just
00:09work on trying to bend your knee by pulling your heel to your hip, pretty simple stuff,
00:14right? But what you've got to do is lots of repetitions to bend this. Stretching it once
00:20or twice is not going to work. What you need to do is lots and lots of slow reps like
00:25this,
00:26up, down, up, down, like 30 or 40 times to try and improve that range, because you're
00:34going to slowly bend the knee. You can't tolerate stretching it for long periods, so slowly bending
00:39and straightening the knee is all you can tolerate, but it also acts like a pump. Remember, there's
00:43fluid in there, so trying to just do a stretch to get rid of the fluid is not going to
00:46work.
00:46You're going to have to cycle the knee up and down, and the other reason you're doing this
00:50is to try and get more flexion so you can get on the bike, and then the bike does that
00:54work.
00:54So this is really good as a segue into that, is how do I get my knee more flexion so
00:59I can
01:00get on the bike, walk better, that sort of thing. Well, this is number one.
01:04Now, for this one, try and put a bit of weight through your heel. So sort of drag your heel,
01:09which fires up your hamstring, because, hey, your hamstring bends your knee. So if you can
01:14sort of push down on your heel as you pull up, then you're going to get a better range in
01:21your knee each time. So reps, like I said, 30 or 40 reps, three or four sets, three or four
01:27times a
01:28day is what it's going to take to get that knee better. Second one is for those of you who
01:33have had
01:34hamstring surgery because, say, you've had an ACL recon with a hamstring graft, and you've got no power
01:40to bend your knee to get the flexion. What you do is you jump on your front and use your
01:44other leg
01:45to help it out. So what you do is put your good leg underneath the bad leg, and you actually
01:52use
01:52the good leg to pull up so the bad leg doesn't have to do anything. All right, so this is
01:56really
01:57good for those, like I said, who've had, say, hamstring problems here, and when you bend your
02:02knee, there's not enough power here to bend it, use your other leg. This one, same drill. You're going
02:08to try and go for, say, 30, 40 reps like this. Act like a pump for the knee, bending, straightening,
02:15bending, straightening, three or four sets, three or four times a day because you're in that acute
02:19phase of trying to get your knee more and more into flexion. The more and more bend gives you more
02:25and more options to rehab it faster, and that's going to help your recovery go a lot quicker.
02:30Now, number three is when you're a little bit down the track in your knee flexion, but you want to
02:35get a bit more range than, say, 90 degrees, and you're having a few problems with the actual
02:41stiffness of the joint. Now, if you've had swelling there for a week or two, this joint will get
02:46really, really tight, and the capsule can seize up a little bit, and so when you bend your knee,
02:50you get a bit of jamming. Now, that's when the physio comes in and starts mobilizing your knee
02:54and gliding and helping you with flexion. Now, you guys can do that at home. That's what I send
02:58people home with.
Comments