After knee replacement surgery, each exercise you do in PT and on your own will help you achieve one or more of the following goals:
- Regain your balance on your new knee
- Strengthen your quadriceps and hamstrings, which help stabilize the knee joint
- Increase the range of motion in your new knee
Regain balance
Balance exercises might include practicing balancing on one leg, standing on one leg with your eyes closed, walking heel to toe, and standing on one leg while tossing a ball to your therapist or a partner.
Strengthen your quads
Your quadriceps provide muscle power to your knees. But if you’ve been less mobile in the time leading up to your knee replacement, these large muscles that form your thighs may have lost some strength.
While the quads are the primary muscle requiring strengthening following total knee replacement, comprehensive strengthening should also include the hamstrings, glutes, hip abductors, and calf muscles to optimize overall lower extremity function and gait pattern.
One example of a quad-strengthening exercise is sitting or lying on the floor with your legs extended out. Then, you’ll contract, hold, and release the quad of the leg with the new joint by pressing the back of your knee into the floor.
Increase range of motion
Many exercises that work your quads also move you through the knee’s range of motion. After surgery, it’s critical that you work almost right away on achieving the new joint’s full range of motion.
“Gaining range of motion is paramount for patient satisfaction after total knee replacement,” Dr. Mansour says. “Strategies include early initiation of passive, active assistive, and active range of motion exercises, combined with muscle strengthening.”
These exercises might include simple leg extensions to bend and straighten the knee while sitting in a chair.
“By two weeks after surgery, your benchmarks are approximately 80 degrees of active knee flexion and 100 degrees by seven weeks,” Dr. Mansour says.
But there’s an important caveat. After surgery, you’ll have specific restrictions related to range of motion that depend on how your surgery was done and the type of equipment that was used.
“While there is no specific restrictions following total knee replacement for range of motion, patients need to be aware that improvement of range of motion is progressive, and takes up to one year to plateau,” Dr. Mansour says.
