Oh My Knees – How Can I Make Them Strong Again?

I don’t get to see people’s knees very often.  Most of my 50+ age students are wearing slacks, capris (formerly known as peddle pushers) or baggy yoga pants.  But, it was a hot day in my Yoga Vista Studio and a handful or two of the students were wearing shorts.  When I looked a bit closer at their knees, I saw a similar sight.  Most knees were starting to bow into the center… almost like knock-knees. I imagine there is some pain associated with those collapsing knees.

Remembering the golden rule of anatomy “the muscles hold the bones in place”, I knew something was up with their muscular structure. It could be that they had weak quadriceps, hamstrings, gluteus and/or adductors muscles which basically form a strong pillar of support around our leg bones… or maybe their arches were falling and their ankles and knees were collapsing inward… and maybe they had many years of doing side-to-side movements (alot!) like tennis, basketball, raquetball, and/or aerobics.  No matter the cause, I knew we had to work on creating strength in their leg muscles and try to improve their knee alignment.

If we strip away the layer of skin, fat and connective tissue, our legs look similar to this anatomical drawing. Those red areas are our muscles!  And there are quite a lot of them that need to be kept strong to keep our knees and bones in alignment.  The stronger and more resilient our leg muscles are, the better our knees will feel.

So, what Yoga pose is super duper for helping to build strong leg muscles and straight joint alignment? You guessed it … Chair Pose!

Want more challenge in your Yoga Chair Pose? Tip Toe! with Sherry Zak Morris, E-RYT