Try These Exercises for Knee-Friendly Leg Workouts

5 min read

THE GYM MANTRA that decrees you should never skip leg day only sounds like a good one if you’ve never had to deal with knee pain.

Summoning the fortitude to crush a lower body workout is tough enough without dreading how your joints will feel during it. Whether you’ve experienced an injury in the past, your form and technique isn’t up to snuff, or you come into training unprepared, you’ll be setting yourself up for a bad time if you expect to just bang out standard leg day exercises without much care.

Even worse, if you’re conflicted by worrying about discomfort or pain, you’ll struggle to make the most of your workouts. You’ll probably be much more likely to skip out on your lower extremity training—even though strengthening the muscles in your legs (and therefore, improving your knee function) will help to keep them healthy as you get older. Muscles, bones, and joints need load and work to stay strong.

If your knee pain stems from an injury, make sure that you’re cleared with a doctor or physical therapist before getting back into the gym. You should also make sure that you don’t push yourself beyond the brink once you’re cleared—if the pain goes beyond just an ache or annoyance, stop training and see a medical professional to determine if you have a more serious problem.

The Knee-Friendly Prep Series

Start slow before getting back to heavy weights and avoid putting pressure to your problem joints. These lower extremity exercises from physical therapist Daniel Giordano, DPT, PT, C.S.C.S. of Bespoke Physical Therapy will all allow you to train without setting off your knee pain. You’ll be able to keep moving while putting mechanical stress to your hips and building up your glutes.

Lateral Band Step

8 to 12 reps per side

As you step out to the side against the band’s resistance, you’ll activate your glute medius muscle, which will help to take pressure off your knee.

Standing Fire Hydrant

8 to 12 reps per side

Another band movement, this also works the glute medius. This time, your leg will be elevated.

Loaded Step Up

8 to 12 reps per side

Add a load, but still move intentionally for your joints. Keep the weight in your heel, which will keep the mechanical stress in your hip.

Goblet Loaded Reverse Lunge

8 to 12 reps per side

As you step up into each rep, make sure you’re pushing down through your planted front foot.

Heels-Elevated Goblet Squat

8 to 12 reps

By elevating your heels, you’ll decrease the activity in your calf muscle to relieve the pressure on your knees.

The Knee-Friendly Exercises

Once you’ve moved beyond the low-impact movements, you can level up—while still training smart. Here are four knee-friendly solutions for confident leg training. Use them all together in one workout, or perform each separately during other sessions.

Box Squat

The loaded back squat is one of the most common leg training exercises around. Sometimes, this still causes pain, whether because of a limited range of motion or prior injuries. We can solve both problems by squatting to a box.

Choose a box or bench low enough to squat where your hip socket is parallel to your knee at the bottom. Exaggerate sitting back onto the box so your shins stay vertical and your knees don’t pass forward over your toes. Bias your weight toward your heels and counterbalance sitting back into your hips more by leaning your torso forward. Brace your core by locking your ribs down to your pelvis. Control touching down so you don’t slam into the box. Don’t let your knees cave inward like a baby giraffe on ice.

Squatting to a box also prevents you from squatting deeper than you can control and maintain form throughout. And you’re not just limited to barbell back squats; box squats work with any squat variation, from the classic barbell across shoulders or with a dumbbell in your hands.

Warm up by foam rolling your quads and glutes for a few minutes (you don’t need 10 to 30 minutes of excessive rolling). This alone can leave your joints feeling and moving better. Start with three warmup sets before doing two to three working sets within two reps of failure. Do three to five reps for strength focus or eight to ten reps for building muscle.

Lunge with a Vertical Shin

Whether you’re walking, jumping, or taking on the dynamic movements that come with playing sports, single-leg (unilateral) training mirrors life. The lunge is one of the most common movements to integrate single-leg training into your workouts, but if your form isn’t on point, it can play havoc for people with knee issues. Eliminate the pain with a simple fix: maintain a vertical shin.

As with box squats, you can take forward pressure off your knees by sitting back more into the hips and glutes, and keeping weight loaded in our heels. Whether you’re doing a lunge or split squat variation, performing a “hip dominant” version usually feels better for cranky knees.

If walking lunges cause pain, switch to reverse lunges, where you step behind your body before standing to your original position, or a split squat where both feet remain stationary as we “squat” up and down. Both variations more easily maintain a vertical shin angle. Lean forward with your torso to counterbalance shifting your hips back.

You should be effectively warmed up from squats so train three to four sets of six to ten reps, within two reps of failure.

Dumbbell Romanian Deadlifts

Sometimes your knees aren’t the problem. Knee discomfort can originate from poor strength or mobility up (hips) or down (ankles) your body. Romanian deadlifts train some of the muscles that might be too often neglected by basic, squat-heavy lower body routines: the hip flexors, glutes, and hamstrings. Not only will strong glutes and hamstrings and mobile hips let you move better overall, it may help resolve your knee pain.

Stand with dumbbells in both hands, pinkies turned 45 degrees toward your sides. Flatten your back by locking your ribs down to your pelvis. Start by bending your knees slightly then initiate a hip hinge motion by pushing your hips back and tipping your torso forward. Keep the weights close to your shins and pivot slowly until you reach as far as you can stretch your hamstrings and glutes without rounding your back. Reverse direction with a forceful push forward from your hips until you’re standing tall with glutes tucked under ribs. Avoid leaning excessively into your lower back at lockout.

Do three to four sets of eight to ten reps, within two reps of failure.

Reverse Sled Drag

Many modern gyms have turf and sleds. Sled work means low impact leg strengthening and cardiovascular training, all without exerting as much force on your joints. Dragging the sled behind you not only feels better on painful knees, it strengthens weak or injured knee structures.

Attach suspension straps to the sled and walk backwards holding the straps in outstretched arms. Push the ground away through your heels as you step. Three sets of a few lengths of the turf finishes off a pain-free workout.

Execute these knee-friendly leg training strategies and learn to enjoy (or at least tolerate) your leg training again. For more PT-approved moves, check out these five exercises that can help to strengthen the muscles around your knees and another five exercises that can help you to train around knee pain.

Get The Gear You’ll Need

If don’t have the equipment you need for above, start with checking out our trainer-tested guides for adjustable dumbbells and weight benches. A few of our favorite picks are below.