The thought of powering through heavy squats or deadlifts while worrying about your joints can be daunting, especially if you suffer from knee pain. You don’t have to completely pack in lower body workouts though. Personal training duo, Jason and Lauren Pak, have shared a five-move lower body workout with modified movements, so you can still strengthen your legs and glutes, whilst giving your knees a little relief.
“A lot of these alternatives work around knee pain by keeping more of a vertical shin angle, which takes pressure off the knee joint.,” write Jason and Lauren on their post. “Ultimately, you want to restore the ability to be able to get your knees over your toes during lower body exercises, so this is more of a temporary solution while you work on building that resiliency.”
For this workout, you'll need either a pair of moderate weight dumbbells or a kettlebell. If you're doing this at the gym, you'll also need to head over to a weight bench, or plyo box, but if you're at home a coffee table, chair or stair step will do. Aim to complete 8-12 reps of each exercise (on each leg where applicable), resting for 60-90 seconds between each movement and two minutes between rounds. Try and complete three rounds in total. Here are the exercises:
- Goblet box squats
- Sliding reverse lunges
- Single leg box step down
- Hip thrusts
- Romanian deadlifts
Need some more knee-friendly workouts? Here’s another one you can whizz through in 20 minutes and, if you’re not a fan of lunges, good news, because you won’t find any in this session. Alternatively, check out these three non-negotiable exercises from a fitness expert that’ll help strengthen your knees, that don’t require any equipment.
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