Exercising after surgery

Host: On this Workout Wednesday, we're talking about knees. I'm here with Jamie Atlas. I recently had knee surgery, but you don't have to wait for knee surgery to do nice things for your knees.

Jamie: That's right. A lot of people have knee challenges. The way I want people to think about their knees: instead of saying, oh, a squat hurts or a deadlift hurts, that's it, I'm out, there's plenty of other ways to do it. Let's just do a small variation right now. Get your feet nice and wide. This is a way where you can really explore your own body and sort of feel what feels good and go with that.

Host: Now, do you have to use a weight?

Jamie: Not at all. Just lightly. 10 pounds, nice and easy. So we're going to drift to the left. We mentioned three lanes of a knee highway, if you will. So I'm going to go straight down. That's one lane.

Host: There's one.

Jamie: There's one. Now stay to the left. Now let's go to the inside, almost like you're trying to clean something off the inside of your right knee. There's two right there. And drift left again. Now go to the outside of the knee. So which of those highways felt easiest for you?

Host: The straight-ahead one.

Jamie: The straight-ahead one. So what we know is that lane works; these two lanes don't. The important part is we play with those lanes while we're doing our movements to see what feels okay, because that gives us a good idea of how our knee is doing and progressing.

Host: And this is something that, if you're at home, you can just stop and do for a couple of...

Jamie: 10, 20 reps.

Host: And move on.

Jamie: And then move on. It doesn't have to be a big to-do, blocking out time in your day. You walk over to the window, you're watching a commercial break: hey, let me work on the muscles that help stabilize my knee. And weight is purely optional. Face that way for me. I'm going to have you put a foot there. Now, a lot of us know this calf stretch. What I'm going to have you do is actually a calf raise for me, because I want flexibility. So right there, nice and easy. Good. Now, just like the knee, the calf needs to be able to go front to back, but also with a rotation. I want you to take that knee out about 45 degrees. Show me that.

Host: Okay.

Jamie: So while you're doing that, have a feel of that. Now let's go the other way. Inside now. That's the lane we found not to go down.

Host: The bad lane.

Jamie: This is the lane with all the potholes in it.

Host: You have two good lanes.

Jamie: If you work on these two good lanes, what you'll find eventually is that third lane will start to come to work for you. Third exercise: lie on your back for me.

Host: All right.

Jamie: I'm going to have you do an exercise you're very familiar with, because you had your meniscus surgery. Even if you don't have a meniscus challenge, this is good preventative maintenance. I'm going to have you slide that heel up and slide it down. Now, the important part is I'm going to put a hand here, and imagine you're crushing that hand.

Host: Push down on that.

Jamie: Crush it. You're going to keep that toe up and then slide that back down. Beautiful. Just like that. If you do 20 to 30 reps of that every other day, that's a great way to make sure your knee has the structure to start to feel better, and also to protect it in case you slip on some ice, something accidentally happens, and that knee gets tested. If we look after our knees, our knees will look after us.

Host: Even if you have one that feels good, do it on those...

The clip ends here.