The global Coronavirus pandemic has affected us all in at least one way or another at this point. Schools have shut down and many are working from home if you are lucky enough to work at all.
It seems like almost overnight our entire society has nearly come to a screeching halt. Governments the world over are shutting down non-essential businesses like beauty salons and gyms. They ask the public to self-quarantine in an effort to limit the transmission of the virus.
With all this newfound free time on our hands, many of us are left to wonder what to do with ourselves. With no gyms to go to, do we simply succumb to the thought of binge-watching Netflix and feeding our worries and fears of the situation with comfort food?
Nobody expected things to turn out like this
For most of us, this situation is like nothing we have ever expected to deal with - especially so quickly. The health and economic ramifications are undoubtedly weighing heavy on everyone’s minds as thoughts of the future become rather bleak among economic crashes and overloaded hospitals.
Now more than ever I believe that it is important for us to do everything that we can to maintain our fitness goals. Not just for the obvious health benefits, but for our own mental and emotional health as well. The mental and emotional ramifications of this pandemic are just as important to keep in mind as the economic and health impacts.
Use exercise to keep your spirits (and immune system) up
Physical exercise has long been proven to be a natural antidepressant. Put together a simple home routine. It could be all that is needed to help make the dark days a little brighter. Many of us are simply not used to putting together these kinds of routines - or being this limited in workout choices - so I thought that I would put together a few tips and tricks to help you stay active and healthy while we are all stuck inside.
Coronavirus Quarantine exercise routine
Do 10 burpees.
Do 10 push-ups.
Do 10 sit-ups.
Do 10 squats.
Rest for 30 - 45 seconds and repeat 3-5 times.
1. Burpees
I love burpees… (Said no one ever)
I’ve been in and around the fitness world for a long time, and I have yet to find someone who actually enjoys adding burpees to their routine. The truth of the matter is that this exercise is undoubtedly one of the most effective at-home exercises that you can possibly do.
It combines compound movements that activate a large majority of your major muscle groups. This annoyingly effective exercise should be on the top of everyone’s at home workout list.
Now for some good news: You don’t have to do 100 of them to be effective.
Start with a number that challenges you and then work up from there. 10 is always a good round number to start with, but this number could go up or down depending on your fitness level.
2. Push-ups
Being a veteran of the U.S. Army, I have spent my fair share of time on the ground pumping out push-up after push-up. This is an Army drill sergeants go to form of 'remedial discipline' for as long as anyone can remember.
This is good reason too: The entire idea behind military training is to build you into a hard, strong, determined soldier - and very few activities build your strength and endurance better than a simple push-up.
As with burpees, you don’t need to do crazy numbers of them. Simply start with a number that challenges you and build up from there.
3. Sit-ups
A strong core is central to overall strength. Whether you realize it or not, nearly every movement that you make engages and emanates from your core - whether it is from your abs or lower back.
A strong, healthy core is vital to overall health and the fitness of your entire body. Luckily you do not need special equipment of any kind to put together a solid core exercise list. Sit-ups and/or crunches are the most popular.
They are simple, effective, and you can do them nearly anywhere.
4. Air Squats
If burpees are king, air squats are queen in the at-home workout list.
They need no special equipment. Air squats are one of the best home-based exercises you can do to keep those extra pounds from piling up and get your heart rate going.
Your legs are the single biggest muscle group in your body, so they will require the most calories to fuel movement.
This simple fact makes air squats high on the list for most bang for your buck.
Put it all together
To get the most out of your home workouts, put your routine together in the most effective manner possible.
Circuit training is one extremely easy and effective way to put all of your at-home exercises together in a way that maximizes their efficiency.
Simply move from one exercise to the next without resting till you have done one set of each of them.
Take a short, 30-45 second break and then do it again. Repeat this 3 to 5 times in a row and you’ve got it.
This is a quick and effective home workout that you can do every day to help keep you in shape - as well as fight off those quarantine blues.
Conclusion
While things may seem bleak in the world right now, it is important not to let ourselves fall into a funk.
By simply taking 15 to 30 minutes a day to give our bodies some physical exercises we are doing a lot to not only maintain our physical bodies, but our minds and emotions as well.
However as I’ve said several times before in previous articles, exercise is only part of the battle.
With so much time on our hands it is even more important we keep a close eye on our diet - especially our portion control.
Boredom eating and comfort eating become a serious problem when you’re just sitting around trying to kill time.
After you’ve done your physical workout, try finding yourself a hobby that you can do from home that reduces your couch time and engages your mind.
Read a book or learn a skill. Take a short online class that helps you learn something that you can use to better yourself and your life after these hard times pass.
Keep your mind active and you will go a long way. Stay away from those constant snack foods. With time all of this will pass and life will go back to normal.
Until then it is on us to do anything that we can to keep ourselves healthy and sharp so that when life returns to normal we will be ready for everything that follows.
About the Author
J.P. Wells has spent the last 13 years of his life learning about and pursuing a healthy and active lifestyle. After sustaining a life-changing injury during his time serving in the United States Military, he dedicated his time to learning, and researching ways to heal and re-build his body to get back to the active lifestyle he grew up loving.
Meet the author.
On his blog J.P. Wells Fitness, J.P. Wells shares his knowledge, and passions he has come to learn from the fitness industry, and fitness culture.
He understands that health and fitness is not just a one-time choice, but a lifestyle. Success in your goals is not made up of large single decisions, but rather a series of small choices made well throughout every day.
You don’t realize how important knee strength is until their weakness negatively affects your day-to-day life. Your knees will also negatively affect your workout program or your sports training if you don’t strengthen them properly.
Different exercise programs for knee strength
Your needs will be different, depending on your current workout routine. If you don’t exercise at all, the exercises that will be the best to strengthen your knees will be different to the exercises that will help if you do regular strength or weight training. They will also be different if you play sports regularly.
For this reason, this article will be split into three categories:
Knee strength training for people who don't exercise
Knee strength training for athletes (runners, tennis players, soccer players etc.)
Knee strength training for weight lifters
Choose the one that best suits your needs so that you can strengthen your knees as quickly as possible.
If you don’t exercise at all, doing knee-strengthening exercises that will help someone who already puts a lot of pressure on their knees because of sports like running won’t do you much benefit.
Knee strengthening exercises for people who don’t exercise
Knee strengthening exercises for people who don't exercise
Your knees could be weak for two reasons:
•Under-use (they don’t do enough work to keep themselves strong)
•Over-use (they are in one position for too long like with jobs that require standing)
In both cases, doing exercises that strengthen the muscles around the knees will help to strengthen your knees.
If you stand for long periods of time, try walking around when you can. Moving the knees will allow extra blood flow to nourish the joints and support faster recovery.
Correct your standing posture
Long-time standers or walkers will benefit from changing their posture. Try not to lock your knees when you stand. Bend your knee ever-so-slightly when you stand so that your weight is placed on your leg muscles instead of the knee joints.
Take note of the way that your feet are pointing when you stand or walk. Try to train them to point forward instead of too much outward or inward. Either way in one of those directions will place a disproportionate amount of pressure on one part of the knee compared to the other side.
See this video on using the right standing posture to avoid joint pain (notice how the knees are not locked in and the feet are straight on the floor):
Exercise routine to strengthen the knees
Follow this exercise routine twice a week
Warm up
Jumping jacks for 5 minutes
Exercises
Squats: 3 sets of 15
Lunges: 3 sets of 15 for each leg
Standing Calf Rises: 3 sets of 20
Stretches
Toe touches (2 x 20 seconds)
Quad stretches (2 x 20 seconds) - Do this by standing on one leg and using your arms to pull your other foot towards your glutes.
Calf stretches (2 x 20 seconds)
Exercise routine to strengthen knees (for people who don't exercise)
If you follow this routine twice a week, the muscles that support your knees should start to strengthen from the second week onward. These exercises will also help to strengthen the knee joint itself.
Knee strengthening exercises for athletes and sports players
Knee strengthening exercises for athletes and sports players
Knee strengthening exercises for people who do sports like running, soccer, rugby, tennis, cycling or swimming
If you feel a pain in your knees, it is most likely due to overuse. Overuse is one of the most common causes of joint pain and injury. Runners, for example, are susceptible to knee injuries because they use their knee joints in the same way over and over again. This can lead to a disproportionate amount of pressure placed on the joint.
Rest (time off), heat and cold therapies will help to speed up the recovery of knee pain or injury. The following exercise regime will help to strengthen the knees against further injury in the future.
Knee-strengthening exercises for athletes (home addition)
Most people won’t have access to a gym. For this reason, I’ve designed this program with these people in mind. These exercises will stimulate the knee joint in a different way to how it has been used during your sport (helping to counteract the overuse problem). It will also strengthen the supporting tendons and ligaments so that they are better able to support the knee.
Follow this exercise routine every Monday, Wednesday and Friday
•Do Jumping jacks for 5 minutes (bend the knee every time you land: Like a mini squat)
•Squats until exhaustion (until you can’t squat anymore)
•Take a 5 minute rest
•Lunge on alternating legs until exhaustion
•Do standing calf raises on a step until exhaustion
•Do toe touch stretches for 3 sets of 30 seconds (wide feet apart) (this is a stretch)
•Do toe touches for 3 sets of 30 seconds (feet close together) (static stretch)
•Pull your foot towards your glutes to stretch out your quad muscle (3 sets of 20 seconds per leg)
•Do calf stretches for 3 sets of 30 seconds per leg
Knee strengthening exercises for athletes
Knee strengthening exercises for weight lifters
Knee strength exercises for weight lifters
If you are a weight lifter, chances are that you do a lot squats and dead lifts already. Squats and dead lifts are two of the best exercises to improve knee strength. Doing squats and dead lifts too often, or at an intensity that your knees can’t handle, can damage your knees.
If squats or dead lifts are too heavy for your knees
Bones take longer to respond to training than joints, and joints take longer to respond to training than muscles.
If you are currently placing more weight on your knees than what your body can handle, decrease the weight of your squats and dead lift by exactly half. Increase your rep range and train till exhaustion.
Bones take longer to respond to training than joints, and joints take longer to respond to training than muscles. Your muscles could be ready for the next challenge, but your knee joints are still playing catch up.
Higher reps help joints to recover
Higher rep ranges reduce the strain that the joints take and give them time to strengthen themselves, while still challenging the muscle to grow. Lower rep ranges, on the other hand, place a greater strain on the joints. In the long-run this stimulates them to get stronger, but they can only grow at a certain rate. The growth rate of joints is much slower than muscle growth.
Do higher reps for a month or two. Once your knees are strengthened, you can go back to your previous rep range. It is better to change your rep range than it is to stop training all together in the future because of a knee injury. I know of many people who had to go through knee surgery because they pushed this joint too far. Just because your muscles are ready for more weight does mean that your joints are.
If you are doing squats and dead lifts too often
Reduce the frequency of your knee-intensive exercises. Knee-intensive exercises include:
Knee intensive exercises
•Squats (and their different variations)
•Dead lifts (and their different variations)
•Jumps (and their different variations)
•Lunges (and their different variations)
All of these exercises improve knee strength over time, but doing them (or a mixture of them) too often can result in damage to your knees. Your joints need more time to recover than your muscles do.
Reduce these knee-intensive exercises to once a week for at least two months, or an 8 week cycle. If you still want to train your legs more often every week, you can do isolated leg movements on your second and third leg day. This will stimulate leg muscle growth without further damaging your knees.
Leg exercises that aren’t too knee intensive
Knee extensions
Leg extensions
Hamstring curls
Calf rises (seated and standing)
Glute kickbacks
Thigh machines
How do you know if the weight is too heavy or if you are doing these exercises too often?
It can be challenging to know whether you should reduce the weight or reduce the frequency of your knee-intensive workouts. Thankfully, I’ve got you covered.
Check your current workout program
If you do the knee-intensive movements more than once a week, it is likely that you are placing strain on your knees more often than what they can handle.
Take note of your rep range. Low reps are great at building strength, but can hurt the joints if done for too long without giving the joints time to recover. When was the last time that you trained at a higher rep range?
Pain duration as an indication of knee vulnerability
If you have been working out for long enough, you should know that difference between a joint pain and a muscular pain. Knee pain in particular is a type of joint pain.
If the pain lasts for a few days, but disappears for a while before you do leg training again, it is most likely intensity related (i.e. too much strain in a single workout session). When the pain persists for longer and does not go away until your next leg workout, you are most likely training more than what your knee joints can handle.
Exercises to strengthen knees for weight lifters
Here is what you can do to strengthen your knees if you already strain them consistently through exercises like squats, lunges and dead lifts:
Warm up the knees before workout them out
A good warm-up routine can increase the amount of work that you knees can take before becoming over-strained, reduce the risk of damage and improve their power output.
The reason why warm-ups are so effective is because of blood flow. You elevate nutrient delivery and by-product elimination when more blood flows to your joints via a good warm-up exercise. You knees will basically start the processes needed for strength and recovery before you do the exercises that stimulate them to do so.
Warm-up exercises for the knees
Light cardio
Do some light cardio before you start with your leg exercises. Do this by using the elliptical, walking at a fast pace or running for a few minutes - or anything that gets the blood pumping throughout your body. Light cardio will improve nutrient, oxygen and energy delivery. This will give your knees the resources that they need to work at their best.
Warm up sets
Do half of your intended weights for the same amount of reps. Warm ups sets can be done for one to two sets before the main workout. You don’t need to do this for every exercise that you do. I’d recommend doing warm up sets before all your major, compound exercises.
Warm up sets will reduce the amount of strain that the actual workout places on the joints because of increased nutrient delivery and better by-product elimination.
Putting a lot of strain on your joints when they are still cold will dramatically increase the strain that they take, the amount of time that they need to recover and it will reduce the amount of work that they can do. Give your knees some time to get into their workload, and they will reward you with better stability.
Additionally, if you work your joints under high pressure at a range of motion that is greater than what they usually reach, they are vulnerable to excess strain. In other words, when the only time that you knee bends a certain way is when it is working at maximum output; it is most likely going to strain.
Do the following exercises regularly to improve knee mobility
This will increase the range of motion that you knees can work under before taking a significant amount of strain.
Proper form
Another one of the leading causes of knee injury is improper form when it comes to squats and deadlifts. Your muscles should be carrying the weight – not your joints.
Your heels should be carrying your weight through to the ground – not your toes. If your heel lifts during the squat, work on calf mobility by doing calf stretches.
Stand with feet slightly more than shoulder width apart. Wider or narrower stances will place a greater burden on your knees. The wrong stance will also cause an imbalance in output between your hamstrings and your quads.
You should point your feet out slightly. This is the most natural pose for your knees. If you point your feet too wide or direct them narrower, the knees carry the lift instead of the legs.
Do not let your knees go further than your feet or your toes. If this happens, you are leaning too far forward. Your joints are then working extra hard to balance out the weight. This will strain your ankles as well as your knees.
Watch this video to see what a proper squat looks like or click the link above to read more tips on squatting with the proper form.
Speed up joint recovery
If you need to strengthen your joints, there is a large change that they are already injured. To help you get back onto the top of your game, here are some tips to speed up joint recovery ASAP.
Take fish oil to prevent joint injury
Fish oil supplementation helps to lubricate the joints. Furthermore, omega 3 is naturally anti-inflammatory. This will help to reduce joint inflammation and speed up the recovery process. 1000 mg of fish oil daily can help to reduce joint damage if taken regularly.
I like to ramp up my fish oil consumption a week or two before I know that I am going to do exercise that will challenge my joints.
Sweat it out
Steams rooms can speed up the body's natural recovery process. Heat causes blood vessels to dilate (expand or open up). This will increase the amount of blood that flows through them. The parts of your body that need to recover will benefit from this because they can receive more nutrients and expel of more toxins, damaged cells or by-products when the blood vessels are dilated.
Have an active rest day
A good rest day can speed up recovery. Use this time to do some light exercises that will improve blood flow and stimulate recovery, work on your mobility and maximize nutrient exchanges in your system. Rest days that involve light physical activity and help to speed up recovery are known as active rest days.
In order to prevent injuries and pain before they happen, I like to incorporate an entire rest week into my training schedule every 2 months. The above link walks you through what I do during my rest week. I always return stronger than before after my rest week, because I give my body exactly what it needs to get stronger.
I hope that you found the answers and exercises plans that you were looking for in this post. If you did (or didn't), please let me know in the comments below. Here's to stronger knees and less pain, Stay Strong!
Squatting is arguably the best muscle building exercise out there. We've decided to compose a list of the benefits of squats that you might (or might not) already know. There are over 100 benefits of exercise in general. You might also be interested in the benefits of push ups or pull ups as well.
Facts about squats
1. Squats work the entire leg muscles
Squats are good for growing the quads, hamstrings, calves and glutes generally. They also work the ankles, abs, oblique muscles and lower back. Yes, they will help to improve calve muscle size.
Squats make your bum look more aesthetic and more attractive to the opposite sex. This is true for males AND females. Guys can get a perfect jock-bum, while girls can use squats to add tone and shape.
5. Squats increase your endurance
The more you squat, the easier the rest of the exercises that you do at the gym will be, no matter what you goals are. This is because squats are so intense. Doing these high-intensity movements will increase your intensity tolerance and therefore increase the amount of physical pressure that you can take in one go.
6. Squats increase blood circulation and oxygen usage
The more you squat, the better your body will be at performing other physical tasks. Since squats are so intense, your body learns to get better at using oxygen and other nutrients in your blood to recuperate. This raises your immune system, metabolic rate and natural energy levels.
7. A squat burns fat at a faster rate than running
Squatting continuously for the same time as jogging, for example, will burn fat faster whilst still increasing muscle mass. Squats take a lot of energy to do (but take a lot less time and space). Here are the calories that different sports burn per hour, on average.
8. Performing semi-squats decrease mobility over time
Like with any exercise, use the full range of motion. Squats are no exception. Doing half-rep squats could negatively impact the general mobility of your muscles and joints over time as you train to work within lesser motions.
9. Doing squats properly actually improves your knee health
Doing squats regularly without overdoing it to injury will actually build your knee/ankle joints and their surrounding muscles, ligaments and tendons over time. Squats are used in some rehabilitation courses to help people rebuild knee and ankle strength. It is important to always use full range of motion and correct form.
10. Squats are good for digestion and help keep you regular
Can't produce squat in the bathroom? Try producing squats at the gym!
11. Squats help to build and maintain muscular balance and posture
The better you can hold your squat, the better your body can hold itself throughout the day. Squatting teaches you to keep your back straight and is great for programming your body to keep the right, healthiest posture without effort.
12. Squats strengthen your core
The better your core strength, the stronger your other lifts will be. A lot of physical power is generated from your core. Note that it is important to still do additional core strengthening work outside of squat exercises.
13. Squats will make you jump higher
The strengthening of the leg muscles used during the squat means that you will have more power accessible for jumping and power exercises.
14. Squats can help your run
Since squats help your leg muscles so much, they can add power to your sprint and offer joint protection for long-distance runners, too.
15. Get mentally used to intensity
If you can squat with heavy weights almost to failure for a few reps regularly, you won't have a problem with added intensity in your other exercises. Since squats are one of the most intensive exercises, once you've got this one down it will be a lot easier to deal with other physical challenges during training.
16. You can squat easily
Squats, push-ups, planks and pull-ups make a great almost-full-body-workout when you can't get to the gym and don't have any equipment with you. Luckily, this means that you can get bigger and stronger no matter where you are!
17. Squatting undoes all of the negative muscle-moves that we do daily
Nothing like some good squats to counteract all the bad postures we put ourselves through in daily activities like sitting, working on the computer and driving.
18. Squatting can help eliminate back pain
This is because it undoes negative posture moves like in the point above, and because it helps strengthen the lower back muscles.
Can you think of any other reasons why squats are so great? Do you know of any other interesting facts about squats? Let us know below.
