Certain Exercises May Make Osteoarthritis Worse

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What are best exercises for osteoarthritis (OA)?

The following are some common recommendations:

Recumbent cycling or stationary bike

They are not only great choice for cardio exercise (great to help improve the health of heart and cardiovascular system), but also cause low-impact on your knee and hip joints. If your body is still poor in balance, recumbent cycling may be more recommended.

Swimming or other exercises in the water

Water workouts are another excellent choice. These include water aerobics, water therapy, and swimming.

The water can absorb the pressure you produce in each physical movement, and this can be so beneficial to provide very low-impact on the affected joint. Even these kinds of workouts are also recommended for people with advanced joint disease.

Walking

Among the choices of exercises for OA, walking may be the most popular choice. It is easy and commonly safe for all people with arthritis. It also requires simple equipment and ‘free’.

Tai chi and yoga

These eastern traditional techniques also can help improve your balance and daily living skills.

However, there are some steps in yoga that may pose hyperextension risk to the affected joint – as noted before. Therefore, it’s much better to see yoga therapist who has experience working with people with OA /arthritis.

Resistance training

Along with other low-impact exercises, resistance training can help improve the strength of muscles in the joint. These muscles should be strong because they can help the cartilage in the joint absorb stress that hits the joint.

The key, make sure you have proper form and lift the appropriate amount of weight that meets to your strength level! But to keep safe, do it with a professional trainer – especially one with extensive experience working for arthritis!

Set a realistic goal!

Regular exercise can help strengthen the muscles around the joint. It is also great way to lose weight or just to help keep your weight off.

If you are obese and have OA, losing a few pounds of weight can affect the way of how you control the disease and improve the symptoms. But don’t jump directly of setting ‘too good to be true’ goal. Instead, it’s recommended to set small, realistic /attainable goal!

After several weeks, your motivation may decrease or even you may feel that your exercise doesn’t have any impact! The key, you should be consistent in the treatment plan and have regular exercise!

If you start boring, variety is the answer. Yap, you can consider a variety of exercises! In fact, even the most fun exercise can be wearisome if you always do it everyday.

Citations /references:

  1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2667877/
  2. http://www.arthritistoday.org/what-you-can-do/staying-active/

These last accessed on September 2014

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One Comment
  1. Nam
    October 13, 2019 | Reply

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