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Good morning guys, Tony Maritato here. So in this video I want to talk about icing your knee either before an exercise, during an exercise, or after an exercise session
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I'm working on an article right now, it should be public by the time this video comes out, but basically you can use ice in a lot of different ways
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You can ice the knee before you exercise. So a lot of patients will experience pain and stiffness when they've been sitting or sedentary for a while
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they're thinking about doing their home exercise program and they're thinking I
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don't even want to move my knee let alone exercise my knee. So a great way to
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use ice to allow you to exercise more effectively is to just go ahead and ice
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before you actually do your exercises. The icing is gonna numb the knee. The
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knee is already stiff so yes icing will make it stiff but it's already stiff so
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I find that some patients feel better if they ice first and then begin their
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exercise. The only advice I would give you if you're using this technique is the
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first exercise you do after icing should not be an exercise that requires you to
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go to full range of motion. You want to do a gentle motion within the available
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range that doesn't cause tissue stretching. After you've done that exercise then you can go into a more aggressive and range of motion exercise
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but icing before exercise is something that you can do. Next we're going to go
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to icing during exercise. So a lot of people if they're doing a recumbent bike
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stationary bike, if they're doing some sort of knee repetitive flexion extension
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if you strap an ice pack around the knee it will help numb the area and it might
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help you tolerate the exercise a little bit better It might reduce some of the muscle guarding some of the soreness that just makes it less pleasant If you going to do something like that having a strap to hold
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the knee, the ice pack on the knee is an important component because obviously you're moving, you're
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flexing, you're extending. We need something that's relatively elastic, something that allows the ice
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pack to kind of move with the motion. And then finally, there's icing after exercise, which is the
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most common way people will do ice at home or in the clinic. If you're icing after exercise, I do
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recommend you place the knee in a position that works whatever range of motion you're having the
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hardest time with. So if you're having a hard time with knee extension, then what you would do is you
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would place the knee in extension. Preferably you'd have it unsupported. So I'm in a chair, I'm placing
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a similar chair in front of me. There's no support under the knee. Now this is a Chattanooga
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cervical pack. I like the larger packs but they're all in use right now so I'm going to use what I've
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got but I would place the cervical pack over and kind of tuck it under. This is a knee strap. The
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company is Mava. I can put links to these two products down in the description and effectively
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what I'm going to do is I'm going to wrap the ice pack on the knee. Now if it's too cold for you to
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tolerate the straight Chattanooga pack on the knee you can put it in a pillowcase that's what we would
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usually do in the clinic since I'm wearing a pair of pants and I'm not that sensitive to cold I'm
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just going to put it straight on like this. But the idea is in this position I'm working on knee
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extension while I'm icing the knee. This will help numb it as well as improve the
