8 Effective Walking Tips for People with Sensitive Knees

Walking is something that must be a part of your routine. However, if you have sensitive knees, it can become a hindrance considering you’ll often experience stiffness and pain.

Walking with knee pain can be very problematic. Your legs will want to give up every now and then, which could lead you to lose motivation. To ensure that you can always include walking in your routine, here are some tips that will help you overcome any issues you face with your knees to a significant extent.

Tips for sensitive knees

There’s nothing that can be resolved overnight. Now, it takes even more time if it’s a joint such as knees, shoulders, or elbows. You’ll need to have patience and implement these tips in your daily routine.

1) Choose a soft surface

Whenever you walk on a hard surface, your knees and ankles take on a considerable amount of pressure. Therefore, to ease the pressure on the joints, a softer surface such as sand or dirt trails are a much better option.

2) Build your time

Once you’ve found a surface that eases the pressure on the joints, you can start building your walking time. You can start with ten minute walks and then push it by five minutes every day or every two days depending on your knees. Ideally, you should aim to reach 30-minutes walking at a moderate pace.

3) Have an aim

If your sensitive knees cannot be pushed to thirty minutes a day, you should at least create an aim for the daily steps. You can aim to begin with 4,000 steps a day and then move to 5,000 and so on. As time passes by, your physical fitness will improve, enabling you to hit at least 6,000 steps a day.

You can track the steps using a fitness tracker.

4) Find the right shoes

Just choosing a surface and the number of steps a day will not help you ease any pressure on your knees. You also need to find the right shoes. The shoes you choose should be bendable and flat, and definitely shouldn’t be high heels or heavy. If you choose anything other than flat shoes, you’re putting your heels at major risk.

5) Choose a good time to walk

If your sensitive knees cause problems during a particular time, you need to choose a different time to walk. For example, if you experience severe stiffness after waking up, you should pick evenings to go for a walk.

Not only will this free you from putting pressure on your knees when it’s in pain, but it will also make the experience much more enjoyable.

6) Warm up

Once you’ve decided the basics of your walk, such as time, path, and shoes, you need to go for the actual walk. It is crucial that you warm-up before your walk, and do some stretches which will open up the smaller muscles around the knees along with the quads and hamstrings.

7) Cool down

Just warming up doesn’t help. You need to cool down as well. It’s important that you cool down and relax your muscles before sitting down and completely resting your knees.

8) Keep moving throughout the day

Even after you’ve gone for a walk, you shouldn’t stop moving for the rest of the day. It’s much better for sensitive knees to keep moving throughout the day at intervals, so that the pain or stiffness doesn’t settle. If it does, you’ll experience it almost throughout the day.

Bottom line

Sensitive knees can become an obstacle for daily life functioning. You’ll want to avoid that as much as possible, and for that you will need to take care of your knees as much as possible.

If nothing works, seek professional help before it becomes worse.