Knee Recovery Stretches and Exercises

As I promised before, the following are the stretches and exercises I was given for my routine by my PT’s at ProActive Physical Therapy. Please check with your doctor or physical therapist before using these:
1) Hamstring stretch – Sit on a flat surface with legs stretched out in front of you, like the side of bed. Leave the surgery knee stretched out in front of you and let the other leg hang off the side. Bend your body as close to your knee as possible, keep foot relaxed and knee flat as possible. You should feel the stretch in the back side of your thigh and into the upper part of the knee.  Hold for 30 count. Do 3 x
2) Calf stretch – Stand arm’s length from wall or chair back leaning or holding on it, while stretching recovering leg by stepping it back about 18 inches behind the good leg, with straightline from foot to neck and holding for a 30 count. 3x’s
3) Quad strengthening. Sit on a flat surface with legs stretched out in front of you. Tighten the quad (muscle on top of thigh running up from the knee) as much as possible and hold for 3-5 count. Do 20 tightenings. Rest it, then do 20 more.
4) Leg Raises: Lay on your back on a flat surface. Bend the knee of your uninvolved leg (the one that wasn’t operated on) to a 90-degree angle with your foot flat on the surface. Keep your involved leg straight without the knee bent. Slowly lift the involved leg six inches off the floor. (by contracting the front thigh muscles). Hold for five seconds. Slowly lower your leg to the floor. Relax and repeat 10 more times. (The knee of the raised leg should remain straight throughout this exercise. Focus on lifting by using the muscles on the front of your hip joint.)
5) Side Leg Raises: Lay on your side on a flat surface with uninvolved leg bent on bottom and recovering leg straight on top. Lift recovering leg about a foot and lower but to about 3 inches above the other leg. Lift slowly and lower 10x’s  do 3 sets.
6)Floor Slides: sitting on the floor – tile or smooth surface is better – with back against a wall or stationary furniture. Starting with both legs lying flat out in front of you, slide the foot of the recovering knee back toward your seat, bending the knee as much as is comfortable. May need to grab ankle to move knee back. Then straighten it back out again flat. Do 20 then rest a minute and do another set of 20.
7) Crab Walk – Using an elastic band around ankles tied so it is taut with about a shoulder width between feet. Bend knees slightly and if feet pointed straight, slide step 15 paces to one side and back again. Do three sets.
8) Medicine Ball Wall Slides – place the ball between you and the wall, leaning against the ball, move feet out a few inches in front of you. Bend knees only as far as is comfortable and not so low that you can’t see your toes or the knees are out in front of your toes, (not to 45 degree angle). Do 30 times.

Knee: 3 Month Post OP Update

It’s been awhile since I gave an update on how the knee is coming along. My six weeks check up with my surgeon was mid October and he was very happy with my progress. I give lots of credit for that to all the prayer support I’ve had. In addition, I have to give the rest of the credit to my physical therapists at ProActive, Dennis and Wes. They prepared me before I went to surgery by doing what they do and making me do the stretch exercises twice a day at home to get the muscles as ready as possible. I think one of the things many people going through this surgery misunderstand is that even though the knee is what gets worked on, it is the muscles connected to it that must recover from the surgery and gain back their strength. So it’s very important to be on a good physical therapy program that strengths your quad, ham string and calf muscles. There were days between the 6-8 week mark that the knee felt almost normal again. After my doctor’s good report he told me I didn’t have to keep going to physical therapy if I didn’t want to. So I stopped regular appointments. I made the mistake of beginning to slack off, doing the exercise once a day instead of twice and sometimes not doing them at all. Then a few of weeks ago, when I had started to walk a half hour a day a few times a week, my husband and I spent a Saturday cleaning house for Thanksgiving and hauling boxes of Christmas decorations up and down the stairs. WOW! I could hardly walk the next day. The knee swelled up. The muscles tightened up, especially in the back. There is one exercise where you sit with your legs straight out in front of you then slide the recovering leg’s foot up toward you as far as you can, then slide it back out straight and flat again. Some people do these “sliders” on their back sliding the foot up a wall. This exercise was one I had easily done with good range of motion but after that weekend I could hardly bring it up halfway. I thought I had injured it all over again. It was clicking every time a bent or straightened it and tightened up like I had a rubber band around it. I got back into my PT (physical therapist) that Monday morning. Wes did his magic and assured me all that was wrong was I needed to get back on the program and stay with it. It was better when I left but not back like it had been. I started heating the knee before I worked it each time twice a day. It was about the same for several days. One night I tripped over our cat in the dark and twisted it even more and it really started giving me a fit. My husband and I prayed over it again. A friend, who had been through 2 knee surgeries told me that all this was pretty common and it would get better. He also told me to start taking ibuprofan for the swelling. The next day, I woke up and got out of bed and the knee was back to normal. I continue to do the exercises twice a day, heating the knee beforehand, taking ibuprofan at night and am back starting to get out and walk again. I’ve come to realize the most important thing for me to do is to keep working the muscles daily to build them up again. There are days when I’m on it more than usual and it feels sore at night but is okay the next day. I’m told this goes on but eventually the muscles finish recovery and it’s all normal again. I think I might be doing these exercises for the rest of my life. If you need the exercises let me know. I can post them. Just ask.

Here’s a good website to visit too: http://www.arthroscopy.com/sp05005.htm