When selecting sneakers, “you wish to be comfy, and also you additionally wish to be supported,” Cassandra Lee, MD, chief of the division of sports activities medication on the College of California, Davis, tells SELF. Dr. Wittstein suggests choosing footwear with arch assist and minimal heel rise to maintain ache at bay. You possibly can add a shoe insert or orthotic for additional cushioning and assist.
2. Swap up your exercises with cross-training.
It’s nice to have go-to types of train that you just like to do again and again. It’s additionally nice in your joints to change issues up sometimes and cross-train, Mary Kathryn Mulcahey, MD, division director of sports activities medication at Loyola Medication in Chicago, tells SELF. This strategy permits you to work many various muscle groups—together with the tiniest ones—in several methods, which helps you keep away from overuse and potential harm.
So, what counts as cross-training? It may be any bodily exercise that works your physique in a barely completely different method out of your predominant mode of train—thereby spreading out the pressure and giving your most-used joints some reprieve. Usually, Dr. Mulcahey recommends yoga, Pilates, or low-impact cardio like swimming and biking (indoor or out of doors), which “don’t put a ton of stress on the hips and knees.” Strolling, utilizing a rowing machine, and water aerobics are good choices, too.
“Yoga is a good behavior to begin early on,” Dr. Wittstein says. “If I might return in time, I’d embrace this as a part of my exercise routine in my 20s.” Yoga is thought to construct core power and enhance flexibility and steadiness, serving to stop falls and related accidents. It will possibly additionally strengthen the again and pelvis muscle groups, which helps assist and defend the hips.
3. Begin power coaching.
Power coaching is without doubt one of the finest issues you are able to do for wholesome joints, Dr. Lee says. That’s as a result of it builds muscle, and muscle protects the cartilage and tendons surrounding your joints and absorbs a number of the shock that influence places on them. Having additional muscle additionally helps you preserve steadiness and bone power.
After you flip 30, you naturally begin to lose muscle mass at a charge of about 3% to five% a decade. Bone density begins to regularly decline after age 40 and accelerates for a lot of girls within the years main as much as menopause. Dr. Wittstein says beginning weight-bearing workout routines as early as you possibly can retains your joints robust and reduces your danger for harm and situations like osteoporosis down the street.
Fortunately, most of the similar workout routines profit each your hips and knees, she says. Lunges, weighted squats, bridges, lateral lunges, deadlifts, and clam shells are some examples, Dr. Wittstein says. These lower-body workout routines strengthen your glute muscle groups and the smaller muscle groups surrounding the hips that enable your thigh to rotate, in addition to your quadriceps, which assist assist your knees.
For those who’re not used to power coaching, begin sluggish, with simply in the future every week, after which construct on that, Dr. Mulcahey says. (SELF’s 6 Weeks to Stronger exercise program is a good place to begin!)
4. Heat up earlier than any exercise.
Earlier than you do something bodily—a exercise, hike, and even simply yard work—do a fast warm-up, Dr. Behenna says. It will get your blood pumping, strikes oxygen all through your physique, and primes your muscle groups for motion, which minimizes pressure and prevents harm.