- Welcome to another easy and effective Quick Fit class with me, Cassy Vieth.

The knee is particularly vulnerable as it sits between the hip and the foot and ankle.

Weaknesses above or below directly affect how the knee tracks, for better or worse.

So today's class will focus on stretching and strengthening above and below the knee.

[gentle music] Have a chair handy and we'll begin with just a few kick-your-butts, just lifting that heel right and left.

Have your feet fairly wide, about shoulder-with apart, and then add your breathing.

Breathe in very deep for, say, four kicks, and then exhale for five or six.

Get all that stale air out.

All right.

Now, let's have your feet about shoulder-with apart.

Let's just do a few easy squats.

We're just bending the knee, bending the hips, just a little bit, just warming it up.

My goal is to help you visualize the mechanisms at play so you adhere to the program and see its value.

Last one.

[inhales] All right, a little bit wider, step out to your right, moving your hips back and your chest over your knee, stretching the inner thigh.

Now, if you're used to this one and you wanna make it a little deeper, just twist through the shoulders, add an inhale, and then an exhale.

It's important to stretch these inner thigh muscles, your adductors, because they tend to pull the knees in and that's very hard on your knees.

Let's do the other side.

Make sure you're moving your weight behind you.

Leaning forward, feel the stretch.

Little pause with an inhale.

Twist through the torso, exhale, sit back down into it.

Feels so good.

All right, stand up.

Brief stretch for the calves.

Have your feet a bit staggered and just sit straight down, this time letting the knees go forward because that's what's going to stretch the calf as well as that Achilles tendon, especially on that back foot.

Tight calves prevent you from getting to the floor easily.

All right, let's do the other one.

Bring that other foot slightly back, sit straight down.

Make sure you're keeping the heel down.

If your calves are tight, that heel tends to come up, so let's keep it down.

[inhales] Good.

All right, next we're going to stretch the quadriceps.

We usually do it by grabbing the ankle, but not everybody can do that, so I'm gonna show you how to use a band.

If you can grab your ankle, just go right ahead.

Otherwise, grab a band, put it as low as you can around by your ankle, and then grab as close as you can to your ankle.

If it's back here, that's all right, but get as close as you can.

And then we'll hang on to your seat.

Let that knee drop.

Okay, squeeze your hind end while you're at it and continue to push that knee down and to the back.

Good; there's always a way.

I always like to come up with some modification so everybody can join in these exercises.

So we're stretching right now.

Let's do a little slightly different technique.

Press the leg into the band.

Good, and release.

Just a regular static stretch now.

And now a little change.

Press the leg down into the band.

And release.

We're still gonna do it one more time, okay?

It's a neuromuscular stretch is what that is.

It's a big, long name, but basically, press that foot down, basically you're activating the leg when it's in a lengthened position, activating the muscle when it's in a lengthened position.

All right, release.

Good job.

We're going to move our chair over to the other side so it's easy for us to do the other quadricep.

We can still hang onto the seat, hang onto our leg or our band.

Okay, ready?

[inhales] And exhale.

Get way more stretch on the exhale.

You can do a little stir with the knee.

[inhales] Okay, now we're gonna activate that muscle.

Ah, don't let the foot go too far.

Keeping the muscle lengthened, but you're pressing the leg into the band.

All right, release that.

[inhales] We'll just do a static stretch.

You're just stirring the knee now, holding the heel by the butt.

And now let's press the foot into the band.

I hope you're standing up tall, you've got your abs tight, your head up over your shoulders, and release.

All right, last static stretch.

So you're pulling the heel here, holding it.

Now press the foot into the band.

Hang in there for five, four, three, two, and we're done with that particular move.

All right.

Now let's start some strengthening work.

Stand close to your chair and extend your leg out to the front, and we're gonna use your quads, so lift.

Now, tighten down, bear down through your core to engage all those muscles that go down, help you do the work better.

But you're standing tall.

Lift and lift.

Let's see, five, four, three, two, now keep going here if you cannot do these, okay?

And it's okay if you can't.

Extend, extend, extend.

And then out to the front again for five, four, three, two, and done, good job.

Oh, I need to stretch that after all that work.

All right.

Switching sides with the chair so we can do the other leg.

Wouldn't want you to be unbalanced.

Stand fairly close.

Extend that foot out in front of the chair.

Stand up, take your inventory.

Bear down through your abs and lift.

Good, make it nice.

Shoulders back, head tall.

[inhales] Don't forget to breathe; no breath holding.

[exhales] And then up and over.

These are hard.

Extend, extend.

I hope you're breathing as heavy as I am.

One more, and out to the side for five, four, three, two, and done.

Good job, stretch it out if you need to; I do.

[inhales and exhales] All right, I would like you now to put your, let's put your left heel up onto the chair.

Get two soft knees.

And now I'd like you to press that heel down into the seat.

You should feel the muscles in the back of your leg just activate.

And now we'll stop the pressing and we'll do a stretch.

If you can straighten the knee more, by all means do so.

Take care that you're not dropping through the shoulders.

When you run out of flexibility in the hamstrings, that's pretty much the next place people find movement.

But we wanna find movement through the hips, okay?

And the hamstring.

So stop whenever your shoulders start to drop.

Good, and now I'd like you to rotate the whole leg in the socket.

Turn those toes towards the chair back or across you.

Keep it there and rotate through the torso the other way.

So this outer hamstring muscle on the back side of your leg is what we're after.

All right, we'll do that whole series again.

Same leg, ready?

Press the heel into the seat for five, four, three, two, release.

[inhales] Stretch it out.

Sit down on that standing leg.

Stand up, rotate the whole leg.

Toes go across you.

Twist to the left.

Good.

And out.

Last time, you ready?

Little bent knees, press it down.

Five, four, three, two, inhale [inhales] and exhale, [exhales] straightening the leg if it can, but don't force it.

You don't want to be grimacing through these.

Stand up.

So it's the left leg.

We're rotating it across your body.

Rotating the shoulders to the left.

Good job.

Well, we've done it on one side.

We have to do it to the other.

So move your chair and we'll start on this leg.

Big inhale.

[inhales] Make sure you have two soft knees and press.

Press that heel down.

At first, you won't feel like you've got any power to really do this, but that will come with time; just be consistent.

And now inhale.

I'm always tight the first time I try to do this, so I don't get very far.

That's why we're doing it three times through.

Okay?

Up, rotate that leg so the toes fall across your body, and then...

So it's my right leg on the chair and I'm twisting to the right.

Good job.

All right, untwist.

Press the heel down, press it.

Pull in your abs.

[inhales] Breathe in and exhale.

[exhales] Stop the pressing and do the stretching.

Take a big inhale and then exhale.

[exhales] Good.

Rotate that leg.

Thumbs up and twist.

Okay, one last time.

You ready?

Press the heel down.

Bear down in your abs for three, two, one.

Extend that arm and stretch.

Don't drop those shoulders.

We want a nice, pretty, flat back.

Come up, and outer thigh hamstring stretch.

Good job.

All right, onto the TFL.

It's a small muscle up here, part of your hip flexors.

It's at the top of your IT band, so it's all connected.

I'd like you to take a big step back with your right leg and then slightly toe out with that back foot.

Squeeze your hind end so that your hips slightly push forward.

You should already feel this engaged.

Arm up.

[inhales] Exhale.

[exhales] If you've got room to move forward, do so.

And then now let's open the hip and the shoulders and even reach over the head, bending through the torso.

Ooh, that's tight.

Let's do the other side.

Reach it back.

There's a lot of cues here, so take your time.

That back foot, let's just slightly toe it out.

Make sure your feet are spread apart enough so that you don't do this, okay?

Every time you get a little more movement forward, you might have to readjust this front foot.

All right, squeeze the bottom, push the hips forward, reach it up.

[inhales] Big inhale, exhale.

[exhales] Squeeze the bottom, rotate through the hips and the torso.

And then if you've got a little more room, bend over.

Good, we'll do one more on each side.

Reach it back, press that heel down, widen your base if you need to, toe out, arm up.

[inhales] Reach it, [exhales] rotate, exhale.

Maybe you feel it more on one side than the other.

I do.

Other leg back.

Toe out.

Hips forward.

Arm up.

[inhales] And open.

[exhales] You might need to experiment with that one a little bit to feel it, or maybe yours just isn't tight.

We'll do the IT bands now.

So follow my cues.

I'd like you to cross the right foot over the left.

Exhale and just let gravity pull your body weight over.

I'd like you to twist first to the right.

Don't forget to exhale.

And then let's twist to the left.

One way actually gets it more than the other, but it's always so complicated and confusing that just do it both ways and you're sure to figure it out which way is actually stretching the correct one.

But they both need to be stretched, so just twist both ways.

We switched our feet.

Big inhale and exhale and over.

[exhales] Good, let your head hang.

Walk your head and shoulders and hands over to one side.

And then over to the other.

If it feels really good for you, take your time, hold the hold longer.

You can easily hold up to 60 seconds.

That's just great.

And then we'll roll up slowly, untangle our feet.

We'll finish up with our calves.

I really like doing the calves on the seat because it's natural for the heel to just hang off the edge of the seat.

You can just put a little body weight down through there.

If it's too tight, just take some of the pressure off, no need to cringe.

And then exhale and hold it.

A good 30 to 60 seconds is a nice hold for the calves.

They tend to be so tight for everybody.

And then we'll switch legs.

Bring that heel up, [inhales] press the heel down.

[exhales] And lift and lower.

Just relax into it.

And that's it.

These are just some of the many simple, yet effective exercises we can do to take pressure off the knee.

Come back often to pbswisconsin.org/quickfit and try all the classes for a well-rounded program to keep you aging well.

It is possible, you know, and we can do it together.

Until next time, keep on moving.

- Announcer: Funding for Quick Fit with Cassy is provided by Greg and Carol Griffin, founders of ElderSpan Management, Focus Fund for Wisconsin Programming, and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.