Knee Arthritis Pain When Standing Up: One Hidden Cause and How to Fix It

 

Common Reasons for Knee Arthritis Pain When Standing Up

Many people with knee arthritis focus on doing exercises to improve the range of motion in their knees and the strength in their thigh muscles.

If you've researched the issue a little bit more, you may also know that strengthening your glutes or butt muscles is important.

But one often overlooked problem is ankle joint mobility.

The Overlooked Problem: Ankle Joint Mobility

Many people do try stretching their calf muscles.

However, typically the way that people stretch their calves is with their heels hanging off the edge of a step or doing a runner's stretch.

The problem with those types of exercises is that in both of those exercises your knee is straight.

However, when you're standing up either from a chair or from the floor, your knees are ben

So that takes your gastrocnemius or calf muscle out of it.

There's a deeper calf muscle called your soleus which is sometimes involved, but another really common issue is mobility in the ankle joints themselves.

If you have a joint mobility problem, you need a joint mobility solution.

Your ankle actually has two joints. It has the talocrural joint, a joint between the two bumps or malleoli on your ankle and the talus, a wedge-shaped bone.

T talus needs to be able to move between those two bumps in order for you to be able to load your weight over your feet as you're standing up from a chair.

If you don't have mobility in that talocrural joint, you can get additional mobility from another joint in your ankle called the subtalar joint.

However, the subtalar joint doesn't move in a straight forward and backward direction.

It has an axis at about a 45-degree angle.

So to get additional movement from that subtalar joint, it causes pronation or flattening of your feet which can cause your knees to knock inwards and cause knee pain.

Furthermore, you may just lack mobility and not be able to get enough weight loaded over your feet to be able to get a good push off to stand up.

Exercises to Improve Ankle Joint Mobility

The exercises that I'm going to show you are joint mobility solutions to address a joint mobility problem in the talocrural joint.

To do these exercises, we're going to use some bands to help mobilize your talocrural joint.

One option is to use a small loop band, which is really convenient and easy to use but is rather easy to stretch, so you don't get as great of a joint mobilization with it.

The other option is to use a pull-up band, which is much thicker and stiffer.

You get a better joint mobilization, but it is a little bit more cumbersome to use.

I'll show you both options, and you can use the one that works best for you.

First, we'll start out with just this little loop band.

Put it around your ankle like this so that it hits right at the crease of your ankle.

Then you loop it around your opposite ankle.

The front ankle is the one that we're going to be stretching.

Keep your foot flat on the ground, toes pointed ahead, and knee over the top of your foot.

Then you're going to lean forward like this, kind of like a mini lunge.

The key points are to keep your heel flat on the ground, and keep the arch of your foot lifted.

You don't want to allow your foot to flatten down.

If you need to hold on to something for balance, that's perfectly fine.

Lunge forwards and backward, oscillating back and forth about 15 to 20 times.

That helps mobilize the talus to get your ankle joint moving better.

This exercise also stretches soleus muscle.

The second option is to use a pull up band.

This will give you a better joint mobilization, but it's a little bit more cumbersome to work with.

To use it, you'll fold it in half and wrap it around the ankle that you're going to mobilize.

Then put the two ends together and step through both ends at the same time with your opposite foot.

Once you have it set up, the exercise is really exactly the same as the previous one.

However, but you do get a much better joint mobilization or a stronger backward pull force from this thicker band.

Foot on chair ankle joint mobilization

Another thing that you can do with the thicker band is to do a chair mobilization.

If you have too much trouble putting weight on that sore foot, you can also put your foot up on top of a chair.

Then use the band to pull backward on your talus.

This way you don't have quite as much body weight over top of your ankle in this case, but you're still getting a good ankle joint mobilization

Standing Up From A Chair Without Knee Arthritis Pain

Then once you've done those things, it's time to get up from a chair.

Sit toward the front edge of a chair and pull your feet back towards you as far as you can while keeping your heels on the floor.

It's really important to keep your heels through the floor because that's how you activate your glutes... by pushing through your heels.

Next, lean your trunk forward to load your weight over your feet.

Then push your hips underneath you using your glutes, and that allows you to come up to a standing position.

Standing Up From The Floor Without Knee Arthritis Pain

Now to get up from the floor, we're going to do somewhat of the same movement.

Get your heel flat on the floor and bring your knee forwards as much as you can comfortably.

Next, bend your trunk forward and stick your bottom up in the air.

Walk the back foot foot forwards, and you're up.

Conclusion

So hopefully you found those tips helpful to stand up from a chair and stand up from the floor with less knee pain.

If you need additional help for knee arthritis and you're in the St. Louis area, we'd be happy to help you here at More 4 Life.

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

Request An Appointment