Strong + Flexible Muscles = Happy Joints

"My cardio has gotten way better now that i've combined my cardio with resistance training... but i find that i'm only limited by some discomfort in my knees. are there any exercise that i can do to strengthen my knees that will help lengthening my cardio routine?"

As a NASM Corrective Exercise Specialist, my training enables me to observe the way a person moves and reverse engineer any movement compensations. The body is intelligently designed to move in a very specific way - with all of the muscles, joints, tendons, etc working together to move efficiently. Biomechanically, the body is wired to expend the least amount of calories possible, because back in the day, energy (ie calories) was precious - food was not readily available and our bodies had to squeeze each morsel of energy out of each and every calorie - after all, it could be days until the next calorie dense kill. thats why unless your life is on the line (hunting food or running for your life) going for a run or a workout takes some convincing.

We dont hunt and gather our own food anymore, but our body is still engineered the same way. Now, we tend to sit a lot and food is overly abundant. So what is our body's response? If a muscle isnt being used, shut it off to conserve those calories. But the body is a kinetic chain - so when a muscle is not doing its job, another has to pick up the slack. When another muscle tries to do too much, it becomes tight and when it becomes tight, it cant do its job! See how this is one big train wreck?

You've heard it a million times - "I have bad knees" or "I have a bad back." But the joint is rarely to blame - underactive and overactive muscles lead to joint breakdown. the pain site is the symptom, not the cause. You can generally look right above the joint or right below the joint for the real culprit and its usually a combination of some muscles being tight and others being weak. So in getting to the question above, if you are experiencing knee pain, you need to strengthen and stretch the muscles that support the knee. This would involve stretching + myofascial release (foam roller) and strengthening. You want your large muscles working together as a team - quads, hamstrings, glutes, hip flexors and calf complex too. My favorite exercises to do this are various types of lunges - forward, backwards, side to side - and incorporating various elements of instability such as a TRX or Bosu to incorporate those oft neglected stabilizers. Because we sit so much, most peoples hip flexors are very, very tight. The lunge will open them up, but stretch, stretch, stretch those hips! Because we tend to be concerned with working the muscles we see, the hamstrings and other muscles on the back of our body tend to get forgotten. I loves me some TRX hamstring curls and hip bridges to engage the hamstrings and glutes. High repetitions will build the muscular endurance that will transfer over to longer, faster runs - Go get it!