Knee Feels Tight When Bending? Relieve Stiffness With These Exercises

Why Your Knee Feels Tight When Bending It

Now, first of all, you may wonder why does my knee feel tight when bending it?

There are several different things that can cause your knee to feel tight when you bend it, but largely those can be grouped into two different categories.

Back of Knee Tightness

If the back of your knee feels like something is blocking you from bending your knee farther farther, then that's likely due to swelling or impingement inside the joint.

That may be from knee arthritis or a meniscus tear or swelling going into a baker's cyst in the back of your knee.

Regardless of the cause, swelling in the back of the knee can give your tightness, stiffness, and maybe even pain when you're bending your knee.

Front of Knee Tightness

The other category is tightness in the front of the knee.

If you feel pain tightness behind the kneecap when you're bending your knee, that's most likely in the patellofemoral joint.

The patellofemoral jiont is the joint between your kneecap (patella) and your thigh bone (femur).

Patellofemoral pain syndrome is most often due to stiffness in the thigh muscle.

Blausen.com staff (2014). "Medical gallery of Blausen Medical 2014".
WikiJournal of Medicine 1 (2). DOI:10.15347/wjm/2014.010. ISSN 2002-4436.

That the farther you bend your knee, the more that quadricep muscle gets stretched over your knee. That in turn compresses the kneecap on your thigh bone.

First we'll cover tips to help with the back of the knee tightness. Then we'll move on to tips to help with the front of the knee tightness.

Back Of Knee Feels Tight When Bending It

If the back of your knee feels tight when you're bending it, again, that's most likely due to fluid collecting in the back part of the knee.

That most often happens when you're sitting with your knee bent for long periods of time.

Gravity drains swelling down into the soft spot in the back of your knee called the popliteal fossa.

That swelling can collect back there and block you from bending your knee farther.

It's important get your knee evaluated by a healthcare professional to find out what's causing that swelling in the first place.

I won't go into the specific causes in this post, but you can learn more about them in my post about pain in the back of the knee.

However, the tips below can help you bend your knee farther.

Exercise #1 To Improve Back Of Knee Tightness When Bending Leg

Take a towel roll and kind of shove it up inside that crease in the back of your knee or the popliteal fossa.

That pushes the swelling back up inside the joint capsule and it allows you to bend your knee a little bit farther.

Bend your knee up and grab onto it with your hands and then pull back as far as you feel comfortable.

You may have to adjust how thick or thin you make the towel roll.

Pull the knee back and hold for about 10 seconds. Then see if you can bend your knee a little bit farther.

Keep repeating that process until you feel like you either can't bend the knee farther or it starts causing pain.

Keep in mind that all of these exercises should all be non-painful. Stop or skip any of these exercises if they do cause you pain.

Exercise #2 To Improve Back Of Knee Tightness When Bending Leg

The second exercise is fairly similar to this one. It's just increasing the weight bearing.

If you feel comfortable kneeling on your knees, you can put that towel roll in back of your knee. Then rock back from a kneeling position.

The mechanics of it in regards to the knee are the same, but you're increasing the weight bearing.

If you have pain on the front of your knee as well, you might want to do this on a pillow or a rug or a bed or another soft surface. Kneeling on a hard surface might be uncomfortable.

Exercise #3 To Improve Back Of Knee Tightness When Bending Leg

The next progression is just going to be moving farther into weight bearing.

Now you're going to stand with your foot up on a chair.

Put the towel behind your knee, or you can even use your fingers.

This exercise has a couple of additional advantages over the first two.

Stiffness in your ankle joint into the movement of ankle dorsiflexion is a big cause of knee pain.

You get two benefits of this, both in bending the knee and dorsiflexing the ankle.

Another advantage of this version is you can control the angle that your lower leg is in.

You have to be able to internally rotate your tibia (lower leg bone) a little bit as you're bending your knee.

You can experiment with how much rotation you have both in your hip as well as in your lower leg during this exercise.

Find a position where you feel like you have the most free range of motion.

You can do that either without the towel or with the towel in your knee.

So those were the tips to help with knee stiffness in the back of the knee.

Front Of Knee Feels Tight When Bending It

What if you feel tight in the front of the knee when you're bending your knee?

Front of knee tightness when bending, is usually due to compression of the kneecap, the patella, on your thigh bone, the femur.

The farther up you bend your knee, the tighter the quadricep muscles get, and the more compression force is on your kneecap.

This in turn can cause patellofemoral pain syndrome.

One thing you can do to decrease that type of tightness is improving the flexibility of your quadricep muscles.

IF you already have some tightness under your kneecap, just stretching your quadriceps might be a little bit uncomfortable because you're creating more compression underneath the kneecap.

Soft Tissue Massage for Front of Knee Tightness When Bending

Doing some soft tissue work to your quadriceps can be helpful before doing stretches to help bend your knee.

Now, to do that, you can use a foam roller.

Lie with your thighs on the foam roller. Then roll back and forth like this from your hips down to just above your kneecap.

However, for some people, getting down on the floor isn't necessarily a feasible option. Additionally, using a foam roller can be a bit uncomfortable.

So another alternative is using a rolling pin.

You can use a baking rolling pin or one that's specifically made for rolling muscles like this one.

With a muscle rolling pin, you can be a little bit more specific and find the areas where your quadriceps are a little bit tighter.

Additionally, you also don't have to get down on the floor like you do with a foam roller.

Finally, you can use a massage gun, and that can help you get more specific.

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You can also get a little bit deeper using a massage gun.

Stretches for Front of Knee Tightness When Bending

After you've improved the flexibility of your thigh muscles, you want to  stretch the quadriceps.

To do that, you can use a neurological technique known as PNF or contract-relax.

Kick your leg out into the opposite leg to and you activate your quadricep muscle.  Hold for 5-10 seconds.

Then it'll go through a period of relaxation afterwards where it allows you to bend the knee back a little easier.

Repeat this process of contracting, relaxing, and stretching 5 to 10 times.

How To Relieve Tight Knees When Squatting

If only have pain when you're squatting or stooping or going downstairs, your thigh muscles may have troublle letting go when you're going to lengthen them.

To get your thigh muscles to relax better when you're stooping, squatting, or going downstairs, try this exercise:

Go down into a partial squat and just go down as far as you feel comfortable going.

Hold that position again for about 5 to 10 seconds.

Make sure this is a comfortable position where you can hold it

Now after you've held that for a period of time, now just sink slightly deeper into the squat and then hold that position again five to 10 seconds.

Then sink slightly deeper, and hold five to 10 seconds.

Keep repeating that process until you feel like you either can't go any farther or until you start to experience fatigue if your legs get too tired.

Take a break, come back up to standing, and then repeat the process.

Conclusion

Hopefully you found these tips helpful if you do have tightness in your knee when you're bending in.

If you need more help to improve your knee mobility or knee pain and you're in the St Louis area, we'd be happy to help you out here at More 4 Life.

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

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