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In The Arena Blog

Knee Strengthening and Rehabilitation Exercises

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Knee injuries are extremely common in any Combat Sport, so in this video Strength and Conditioning Coach Jason Salazar shows some exercises to strengthen the muscles around your knee, and help get you back on the mat.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Coach Jason Salazar:
My name is Jason, strength and conditioning coach. Today we’re going to talk about a little knee rehab. Before I start, I’m not a doctor. I’m just going to show you some simple exercises that can help you get along your way from an existing injury. The exercises that I’m going to show you today is about strengthening the muscles around the knee, not so much the muscles inside your knee, and before you start any of this, always consult with your doctor if it’s okay to start your rehab.

 

Just start off with a regular squat. Squat as low as you can get, just nice shallow squats. After you start getting the mobility back into those squats and we’re feeling good, we can put one of these bands around us. Stand in the same position. Make sure your knees are tracking over your feet, push out just like a regular squat. When we’re doing our lunges though in the beginning of this, just go as far as it feels okay. Don’t force yourself to get all the way down. But if you are going all the way down, make sure 90 degrees straight up and down.

 

We’re going to lay flat on the ground. We’re going to put some resistance on this band. Going to let my leg come all the way back, keeping my heel on the ground push straight back out. Nice and slow, and controlled. You don’t have to go all the way up. Just little ones. Remember, taking everything nice and slow. Raise our hips up nice and straight. Elevate one of those legs and just repeat it. Up and down. Once you feel a bit better about those, we’re going to stick a band on. Bridge those hips once again, raise that leg up. Now it’s going to be a little harder. Going to add a little bit of pressure on that knee. All I’m going to do, lay flat. Make sure your hips are on the ground. Curl it up nice and slow back down. Curl it back up.

 

I’m going to go on one leg, put all my weight on that one. I’m going to like … a mini little bit of a lunge forward. Then I’ll turn a little bit, we’ll turn a little bit more. You want to get about seven turns out of this. Going to put both feet up to start with, and then bridge our hips up. Get a little more advanced. Take one foot off, bridge up. Even more advanced, we’ll try to curl that ball up into us. Just let the hamstring curl. And then once our knee is healed, we should probably continue to do these exercises to further strengthen our knee so we can prevent any future injuries if we can get back in there and fight.

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