Exercises Youth Athletes Should Be Doing: Knee Durability
Knee injuries are all too common for youth athletes. Youth athletes can hurt their knees for a variety of reasons, but one of the best things we can do to help reduce injury risk is to be strong.
Strength means an athlete can handle more stress to a specific area of the body. That means fewer injuries and better performance.
Keep reading to see some of our recommendations for exercises youth athletes should be doing, with a focus on knee durability.
How To Prevent Youth Athlete Knee Injuries With Eccentrics
To really help reduce the risk of injuries, training has to be intelligent and challenging. We love eccentric exercises because they inherently overload a muscle.
Eccentric exercises emphasize lengthening a muscle under tension. With these kinds of exercises, muscles can handle more challenge than with more "traditional" exercises that focus shortening a muscle under tension.
The point of training is to challenge a muscle, movement, etc. to do a little bit more than it has done in the past, let it recover, then repeat. In this way, we build strength and resilience.
When it comes to exercises youth athletes should be doing, eccentric exercises are a simple way to help ensure muscles are being appropriately overloaded. Take the nordic hamstring curl for example.
Nordic Hamstring Curl to Prevent Knee Pain
The goal here is to maintain a straight line from knees to head and fall forward slowly as far as you can.
By definition, this exercise overloads the hamstrings because you will reach a point where they cannot hold you up anymore and you have to catch yourself with your hands. That is why this exercise is so effective at reducing injury risk. If you do it correctly, it will ALWAYS be challenging.
Here's an alternate setup if you don't have a partner.
Assisted Nordic Hamstring Curl
Here are two other eccentric based exercises we love:
Reverse Nordic Curls for Quad Strength
Same concept as the nordic hamstring curl, but now we are falling backward. Most people can't go all the way to the floor with this one, so we give a target. This exercise targets the quadriceps (thigh).
Copenhagen Planks with eccentric lowering
This is a very challenging way to train the adductors/groin muscles. The top leg goes on a bench (or something similar). Bottom knee is bent out of the way or extended under the bench. After finding a stable position, you slowly lower your bottom hip towards the ground, then come back up.
Simple, Yet Effective Training For Knee Durability
As you can see, these exercises are relatively simple to perform, but they are NOT easy.
These are some of our favorite exercises to include in rehab and injury prevention programs for our youth athletes and we truly believe these are exercises youth athletes should be doing. We also really like them because they require very little to no equipment so they can be done in the gym, on the field, etc.
How To Program Knee Exercises For Youth Athletes
Start with:
2 sets of 6-10
1-2 times per week
For each of these and see how they feel. Research has shown that a ton of reps aren't necessary to get the injury risk reduction benefit out of these exercises.
If 2 sets gets easy, progress to 3 sets. You can also make this harder by slowing down the movement and in the case of the nordic hamstring curls, you can reduce or eliminate the assistance (if you are using it).
Knee Physical Therapy in Lakeville, MA
We are experts in helping youth athletes recover from knee injuries (as well as shoulder, ankle, hip, back, etc). We specialize in getting youth athletes back to the sports they love safely and quickly while also supporting their long term health and athletic development.
If you have any questions about what we do or want to chat about how we can help you or a youth athlete in your life, CONTACT US today.