How to Improve Knee Stability

The knee's complex combination of bones and connective tissues opens it up to all sorts of problems, especially when it's surrounded by weak muscles. Fortunately, there's a lot you can do to improve your knees' stability. Weight training, stretching and adjusting your biomechanics can all help make those knobby joints more stable and less prone to injury.

Instructions

    • 1

      Make sure you don't have any serious knee injuries. This sounds obvious, but you can actually injure the ligaments in your knee without knowing it. If your knee feels like it's going to give out or you have extremely limited mobility in the joint, have a doctor check you out.

    • 2

      Strengthen your quads. Leg extensions and squats are the best ways to make these all-important muscles stronger.

    • 3

      Increase the strength of your hamstrings. Many folks forget to target their hamstrings during their weight training session, which creates a strength imbalance between them and their quads. Squats, glute-ham raises and hamstring curls are the best way to do this.

    • 4

      Spend time improving your sport technique. Learning to run, jump, shuffle and turn properly makes it easier for your knees to handle the stress they experience during exercise and competition.

    • 5

      Use a balance board to improve your body awareness and proprioception. Various studies have shown balance training to be an effective measure against ACL tears and other knee injuries.

    • 6

      Make sure your quads, hamstrings and calves are reasonably flexible. You don't need to be able to do the splits (in fact, too much flexibility can make your knees unstable), but your leg muscles should be loose enough to give you a full range of motion during your sport.