Work out Wednesday: Exercise with knee pain

Knee pain sufferers know that exercise is a crucial part of treatment. Unfortunately, many get caught in what's known as the vicious cycle of knee pain. Your knee hurts, so you start avoiding activities and exercise, which can lead to weight gain and more knee pain.

If all the benefits of exercise could be put into a single pill, it would be the most widely prescribed medicine in the world, but it's hard to exercise when you're in pain. The sooner you find a treatment that relieves your knee pain, the sooner you may get back to the exercises that benefit your knees most.

Overall, exercise is wonderful for joints, but not all exercise are not created equal. In general, patients with knee problems should do lower-impact, aerobic-type activities such as walking, cycling, elliptical training or water-based exercises.

Cycling is one of the best for helping to build your thigh muscles.

Walking is also good, but it may be too difficult for some individuals.

Stretching primarily helps the muscles, while range of motion (ROM) exercises target the joints. However, they are both extremely important for those with knee pain. The purpose of warming up is to get blood flowing to your muscles

Joint ROM exercises help keep mobility in the joint and prevent the stiffness and motion loss that is so common

To improve or maintain joint mobility, gently and slowly flex the joint as much as possible and hold 10-20 seconds, then extend the joint and hold for another 10-20 seconds.