How To Get Up Off The Floor With Bad Knees

Why It's Difficult To Get Up Off The Floor If You Have Bad Knees

Getting up off the floor can be difficult if you have knee arthritis for several reasons.

1. You have to lift your entire bodyweight off the floor with one leg if standing up from a kneeling position.
2. It may be painful to kneel on your knees to stand up.
3. If you don't have furniture to hold on to, getting up from the floor requires balance.

Many Knee Exercises May Not Help You Get Up Off The Floor

Traditional exercises for knee arthritis are done either lying down or starting from a standing position.

When you squat starting from a standing position, the motion gets progressively more difficult the farther down you go. So, you can control the difficulty by controlling the depth.

However, when you're getting up off the floor, you're starting from the hardest part of the motion.

In this position, your knee is bent, which compresses your kneecap (patella) against your femur.

Additionally, your thigh is parallel to the floor, where the downward force of gravity has it's greatest effect.

If you can't get through this initial part of the motion, then you're not going to be able to stand up off the floor even if you're strong through the rest of the range of motion.

So, you need to do strengthening exercises that get you stronger in this starting position.

The problem is that if you have trouble getting on and off the floor already, you probably don't spend a lot of time strengthening in this position.

That's where the first exercise comes in.

Getting Off The Floor Exercise 1

The first exercise is going to simulate a lunge position while sitting in a chair. You need a chair that doesn't have armrests so that you can hang your leg off the side of the chair.

You'll strengthen the front leg during this exercise.

To do that, get your front knee over the toes of your front foot keeping the heel flat on the floor.

Lean your trunk forward until you get pressure over this leg.

Then press your heel down into the floor, only as hard as you can without having pain.

You may have to move your knee inward or outward a little bit until you find the angle that's most comfortable for you.

It's very likely that you won't actually stand up from the chair when doing this exercise.

Just press your heel into the floor to activate your quadriceps (thigh) and glute (butt) muscles.

Hold 10 seconds and then repeat for 5-10 repetitions each leg.

Getting Off The Floor Exercise 2

For the second exercise, stand with your foot on top of the chair.

Hold on to the back of the chair for balance.

Then the exercise is pretty much the same.  Jut push your heel down into the chair and hold for 10 seconds.  Repeat 5-10 times each leg.

Getting Off The Floor Exercise 3

Now, finally, we'll progress to a full weight-bearing position. And in this, you're going to do a lunge starting in a wide stagger.

This position helps you keep pressure on your front heel.

Go down into a lunge as deeply as you can without having pain.

Make sure you have something to hold on to if you have balance problems.

Find the position of knee over toe where it feels most comfortable.

For some people, that's right over your toes, for other people, it's slightly outwards, and for yet other people, it's slightly inwards.

You don't want to let your knee drift too far inward though.

Again, just go down as deeply as you can comfortably.

Then hold that isometric position.  Doing so helps get your brain more confident of your strength in this position.

You may find that after you've held this position for 5 to 10 seconds, you may be able to go a little lower into the lunge.

If you feel like your leg's getting tired or like you're getting unsteady, then take a break.

Stand back up and rest for a little bit, and then repeat.

How To Get Up Off The Floor With Bad Knees

Getting your legs stronger takes some time.  However, here are 3 techniques that you can start using right away to make it easier to get up from the floor.

Get Up From Floor Technique 1

For this tip you're going to start in a lunge position with one knee on the ground and the other one up.

If you can't kneel on your knee, don't worry.  The next 2 tips don't require kneeling.

For this one though, bend your trunk forward to rest your chest on your thigh.

Put your hands on the floor on either side of your front foot to give you extra balance points.

Then put your head down and raise your hips up.

From here you can walk your feet forward and then stand up from there.

Get Up From Floor Technique 2

For the second tip, you're going to start out on your bottom lwith your ankles crossed.

Put your hands over on the side of the leg that's crossed underneath.

Then you're going to rotate your body around your hands and feet.

You'll have to make almost a full circle in order to spiral up to your feet, but this prevents you from having to kneel on a painful, arthritic knee.

Get Up From Floor Technique 3

The third tip is similar to the seconds, but it's a bit faster and more direct.

You'll curl up in a tighter ball and then use momentum to quickly throw your hips up to a point where you can stand up.

You can learn more about that technique in this post.

Conclusion

So those were 3 exercises plus 3 additional tips on how to get up from the floor with "bad knees" from knee arthritis.

If you live in the St. Louis area and need help for knee arthritis, we've got plenty of other ways to help you in person as well.

Just tap the button below to request an appointment with one of our specialist physical therapists.

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