In my mid-thirties, I started to hear clicking in my knees. I was horrified. It was a harsh reality that I was getting older. My first reaction was to rest my knees with the hopes that the problem would go away naturally. But after much thought, I made an appointment with a knee specialist to avoid any future damage.
Before I met with a doctor, I had scheduled a ski trip. I was very worried that the timing was terrible and my knees would only get worse while skiing. The last thing I wanted was to hurt my knees even more. Fortunately, I went on my trip and didn’t have any problems. If anything, I noticed that the clicking went away. My knees felt stronger and I was able to perform my other activities better.
I went to the doctor the following week and told him about my knees clicking and how it dissipated after the ski trip. He said my knees were clicking because they were getting weaker. The ski trip strengthened them and provided the additional support they needed. I was shocked! What I expected to hear was that I needed to rest them but instead he told me I needed to strengthen them. He said that strengthening the muscles around the knee would provide more stability. With this new information, I went home and started a workout routine to correct the problem.
There are many knee exercises (or here) you can do if you don’t belong to a gym or want to do them while at home. Since I belong to a gym, I chose to strengthen on the stair machine along with working in some knee curls and presses. If you haven’t done many stairs in the past, start with a simple routine of just five minutes. Slowly work in more time as you proceed. If it’s possible, try to do two steps at a time. This way you’re using more of the leg muscle.
I still periodically hear clicking in my knees and this is a warning signal that I need to strengthen the area more. Once I do some exercises, the clicking goes away.
There are some other exercises I’ll do once the weather starts to get nice and I’ll be sharing those in upcoming posts!