Exercises for shitty joints?

SpongeCroft · 2014-10-01T12:45:36+00:00

5x5, starting low & slow. squats CAN actually help with your knee if done right. i'd consult a doctor since noone here knows which injuries exactly you suffered.

RedPillSafe · 2014-10-01T11:57:24+00:00

Old age is like this. I'm 53 years old.

Basically as you age you tend to rip muscles and tendons easier and the recovery time slows with each year you get older. It just becomes difficult to gain muscle.

I do cycling. The first half hour on the bike I let all my joints get loosened up. I never sprint in the first half hour. Then once warmed up you can increase your output.

The great thing is that when you get off the bike you aren't sore. You never feel like crap or have obvious tears that slow you down. Your cardio improves and this gives you more energy. Plus, if you are lucky and have nice bike trails where you live it's just great to be outdoors.

Lifting is great, high intensity workouts are great, but if you are injured or aging you have to be more careful.

Let me add that at one point my knee was a mess because of the wear and tear of a long volleyball involvement. (10+ years). My tendons had ripped and I wasn't interested in having surgery. Over time I've built my knee back so that I really can no longer notice a knee problem. But the secret is to be gradual in coming back. If you overdo it you set yourself back. (sometimes for weeks)

This is why cycling is good because you warm up and carefully add intensity rather than adding all the pressure at once.

In your situation you need to be SMART about your workouts.

I bet you miss your youthful perfect fitness (as do I) but accept the reality you have.

Once fully recovered you can attempt more aggressive lifting.

dicklord_airplane · 2014-10-01T21:32:26+00:00

please don't listen to amateurs and go see an orthopedic surgeon or sports medicine specialist so that you can get physical therapy prescriptions. you could easily make your shoulder and knee injuries worse if you jump right into lifting without an expert opinion. go see an actual doctor instead of listening to a bunch of macho randos on an online forum.

BellatorCordis · 2014-10-01T14:36:18+00:00

Each joint in your body is comprised of bones, muscles, tendons, and nerves. Each of these factors must be kept in mind when exercising joints, especially weak ones. Injuries can also cause scar tissue to inhibit movement, and muscles around joints will often compensate for joint injuries by becoming more rigid and tight, which increases the structural rigidity at the joint. Side effects of this are that the tightened muscles will pinch nerves. This can also cause problems as when the muscles around the injured joint tighten to add rigidity to the joint, they pull on the muscles that are attached to them, and those muscles in turn pull on the muscles that they are attached to, and so on. The body is synergetic and intricately interconnected, and issues in one part of the body can thus cause cascading problems elsewhere.

Your first order of business is stretching. If you extend your arm completely with your palm facing up and pull down/back on your fingers (almost hyper-extending them) you should feel a stretch from your fingers through your elbow, and then up into your shoulders. Try it laying down with your back and head at rest for a better stretch in the shoulders. This will help with muscles that are over tight, and will help break up any scar tissue that is restricting movement/pinching nerves.

Next, you will need to strengthen your tendons and nerves. This is best done via light exercise that emphasizes large muscle groups and stabilizing muscles.

Due to my martial arts background, I am biased towards body weight training. For starters, try pushups against a wall. Stand at an incline with your hands pressed against the wall shoulder width apart. Do your classic push up movement, slowly bringing your nose to the wall until it barely touches. Push your body off of the wall slowly and steadily until your arms are as extended as possible without locking your elbows. Make sure your back is straight and your posture is symmetrical. Pause for about 1 second at the 'top' and 'bottom' positions. You can increase or decrease your incline against the wall to alter the difficulty.

You should check out the book Convict Conditioning, as it teaches a lot of exercise like this that are super easy and useful from a healing perspective, and then it progressively teaches you more difficult variations until you're doing one armed regular pushups. Joints need to be built up progressively, over months and months. Slow and steady wins the race.

Source: I just had my spine (in the neck area) cut in half and fused back together. I have been researching and developing exercises with physical therapists to strengthen joints and their corresponding muscles and tendons. I was able to return to work in one month instead of the average 2-6. Convict Conditioning.

ohhaio · 2014-10-01T13:57:12+00:00

I also have old injuries and sketchy joints, both shoulders and low back and one knee. To me the by far biggest thing is to cut out sugars and processed carbs (starches). Go full paleo diet if you can.

Drink lots of plain water, eat healthy, and do lots of low weight, high rep range of motion stuff to build the small muscles that need re-building from lack of use. Only after several months of that should you start lifting the "big lifts" an I recommend getting a real coach / trainer to help.

Dogamaran · 2014-10-01T12:14:30+00:00

I would recommend first doing mobility training for your whole body. Get the book Supple Leopard. That's the first step to rehabbing your injuries. Then there is yoga. It's awesome shit. I try to do it at least once a week but I also do crossfit and run. There are tons of dudes who have made massive improvement with yoga alone and it's also great for mobility. With your issues even after you get to a point you can lift etc you're gonna want to keep doing it. Also on the block is swimming. Fucking awesome full body workout. If all you did was yoga and swimming and mobility training you'd be in pretty good form. Additionally get the book Chi Running. Changed my running game big time because I used to run all sorts of wrong. Now I can do distances that are long and never worry about shin splints, knee injuries, hip pain etc.

You work through with mobility training, yoga, swimming and down the line some running for a while you'll be rehabbed. Then... Incorporate Lifting.

This isn't the be all end all list but it certainly shows that there are other options out there for you. I'm sure other can recommend things as well.

Just read the above post about cycling. Yup good too.

etcomro · 2014-10-01T13:17:22+00:00

What all these guys said.. plus lose the weight. A good diet will get you there in about 6 months. You're putting more weight on your joints than they've been used to. I got runner's knee when I put on 30+ lbs and after dropping a bit of weight it's getting better and better. Adding muscle will also help take the load off of your joints.

Thursday088 · 2014-10-01T13:37:32+00:00

I'm no expert but I have spent my entire life in sports including football in college as well as a kinesiology class here and there, but what I'd like to know first is if you know why your joints hurt. Is it messed up cartilage, trauma to the joint, or a simple ROM problem. From your description it sounds like you might have all three.

I had problems with my knee once, hurt like an absolute bitch to walk up and down stairs as well as getting up from sitting. Scared the life out of me since I tore my MCL in high school and I thought it was making a comeback right in the middle of my training, luckily It turned out that the anterior ligaments of my left leg needed some good stretching. Took a few months, but it was such an easy fix compared to what I origianlly thought it was.

Most have mentioned mobility training which is great advice. It's all about starting small and slowly building your way up. You need to build up your strength and motion in these joints. It might be a bit painful at first if you're working through scar tissue, but know when you're pushing your recovery too hard as you don't want to regress because you pushed too hard too early.

Dogamaran gave some great advice, and I concur on his points. The biggest thing here is to not get discouraged. It sucks so damn much having to rehab an injury, because it's such a setback. Try to keep motivated and a positive frame of mind, if you feel yourself slipping get back to us and maybe we can light a fire under your ass. Don't kid yourself it's probably going to be a long road to full recovery, but it will be worth it.

*Might have to come back and edit as I wrote all this really quick while getting ready for work. Hopefully it makes enough sense to you.

[deleted] · 2014-10-01T13:46:56+00:00

i got some shoulder issues, and this saved my fitness life:

http://www.amazon.de/Hudora-76698-HUDORA-Fitness-Expanderset-3-teilig/dp/B004ISL53Q/

use them for a week, every day, before you start exercising again, and naturally avoid exercising when there's a deep kind of pain, or extremely reduce the weight you're working with.

i do this exercise for my shoulders and it has done wonders for me: http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/img/244Cfig2.PNG

i can shorten the band or move away from it to control the strain/"power" i exert - it all depends on how much pain i feel.

edit: i notice i also need to use the rubber bands everytime i reach a weight milestone and have to increase. i then spend 2-3 days using the rubber band before i pickup the heavier weight.

edit2: learn how to do proper pushups. bad form can actually destroy even the healthiest of joints. i suffered terrible pain due to bad pushup form, and it lasted for months. i didn't feel it at first when i was doing 20 a day, but when i hit 120 a day, things started to hurt real bad and forced me to stop and get joint braces and learn how to properly do pushups. check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4kZHO9LLjs

TominatorXX · 2014-10-01T13:52:49+00:00

Ice skating/roller-blading will help strengthen the muscles which stabilize your knees. It's low impact.

Maybe a wobble board as well.

kingofpoplives · 2014-10-01T14:25:01+00:00

I expect I lot of the lifters around TRP will end up running into this at some point.

Joint mobility training - anything the uses the joint's entire range of motion and circulates fluids will help. Gotta do it on a daily basis.

Internal martial arts and chi gung - tai chi, bagua, and hsing-i. This stuff will do incredible things for your health, especially for your joints. I used to have stiff and sore joints, back, shoulder, and knee pain. Once I started doing this stuff it went away real fast. There's a reason people that master this stuff are bad asses into their 80s and even 90s in some cases.

Padre55 · 2014-10-01T15:04:16+00:00

Cycling works wonders for strengthening bad knee joints and building stronger muscles and tendons around the knees.

I'd also reduce carb intake and up fat intake overall as it is a sort of lubricant for your joints.

Had two dislocated elbows and a bum knee (hit with a machete) and bike commuting for 3 yrs daily straightened me out quickly and I'm far older than you by over ten yrs.

favours_of_the_moon · 2014-10-01T15:31:28+00:00

Cycling is easy on the joints, swimming even more so.

You could try something like Yi Jin Jing, "Muscle Tendon Transformation." Low impact, but great. Do Ba Duan Jin first, it's called "8 Pieces of Brocade."

http://youtu.be/UDVPsRJODmE

http://youtu.be/IFoOUUNP_Oc

-robknows- · 2014-10-01T16:10:29+00:00

Oh man you sound completely incapacitated. Can't run, can't get full range of motion on shoulders or hips... sounds bad.

Your best shot is to have a really good diet.

williamwilliam2 · 2014-10-01T20:20:31+00:00

When I went wheat-free, my joint problems went away. Prior to that, I used to use MSM creams, which helped. Glucosomine (spelling?) helped also.

Anderfail · 2014-10-01T20:29:24+00:00

Lifting weights will help just about every joint, bone, and muscle problem. If you have pain such that you cannot lift then it's time to go back to the doctor because something is wrong.

Further, there is always steroids, HGH, and other controlled substances that can help you build back strength in your body. Do not go this route unless you do your own research and you have tried the above for a significant period. These drugs are no joke and going in blind can seriously mess your body up.

wheyapartment · 2014-10-01T20:31:23+00:00

I get crippling back pain if I don't do any exercise and start walking again out of the blue, but if I make walking a habit, I have no problems.

prawson · 2014-10-01T19:10:04+00:00

Very seriously look into yoga, specifically Yin and Restorative styles. There are contraindications (modified versions) for every pose and a good instructor will be able to work with any issues you may have. Plus most classes are 80% toned women, so you have that going for you.

Title	Exercises for shitty joints?
Author	[deleted]
Upvotes	15
Comments	36
Date	October 1, 2014 11:41 AM UTC (11 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/TheRedPill
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/2hzd4b/exercises_for_shitty_joints/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/TheRedPill/exercises-for-shitty-joints.22150 https://theredarchive.com/post/22150

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