It is important to continue building on weight bearing exercises to prepare the knee for the demands of your day to day life or your chosen sport.
You can build strength in your legs by starting to increase the weight you are lifting.
Exercises with 3-4 sets of 8-12 repetitions, using a moderate weight, is recommended for the first three to four weeks of rehabilitation. Once the body has started to adapt to these exercises, work towards a more advanced programme can be started.
When you are lifting heavier weights, you are likely to experience more muscle pain and soreness after your activity, known as ‘delayed onset muscle soreness’ or ‘DOMS’. Therefore, more recovery time is needed between exercise sessions. Usually exercising twice a week is sufficient when strength training with heaver weights.
National guidelines recommend that adults should aim to achieve “strengthening activities which work all the major muscle groups two days per week.”
Examples of exercises that you can use in the gym to strengthen your legs are:
If you have mild to moderate pain whilst you are exercising, then most of the time this is perfectly normal and nothing to worry about. You are stimulating the area in your body that is causing you irritation, so it is inevitable that you will have some discomfort. This may persist for some time after finishing exercising.
The right amount of exercise can encourage healing of tissue in the body, and it does take time for you to learn your limits. How much and how long the pain lasts for is something you will discuss with your physiotherapist, but usually if the pain and the length of the time the pain lasts for is acceptable to you, then it’s fine.
Below are control and strengthening exercise videos for the legs. These exercises will help reduce the chance of a future injury to your knee, and give you back confidence.
A good exercise to test control and endurance is performing as many single leg sit-to-stands as you possibly can. Compare both legs and aim for 20-25 in one go.