Try These Workouts For Natural Joint Relief

These exercises can help alleviate pain and provide natural joint relief.

Injuries and underlying health issues like arthritis can cause some serious pain and aches in your joints. When you experience these sharp pains in your joints, the last thing you’ll want to do is hit the gym and exercise. Even though you may not feel like going to the gym due to the aches, working out can help reduce your joint pain and increase your strength and flexibility to decrease the risk of future ailments. 

The more you move, the less pain you’ll experience. In fact, if you don’t exercise, your pain will most likely increase … no one wants that!

My mom suffers from arthritis, and I’ve seen first hand how working out has helped her reduce her pain and get stronger in the process. For natural joint relief, try these workouts:

Low Impact Cardio

When your joints hurt, you want to avoid high impact cardio exercises like running on hard surfaces. Instead, opt for low impact cardio like bicycle riding and swimming. Even a simple walk can help the aches and make you stronger. If you have a gym membership, try the rower machine, the elliptical, or the stairmaster for other forms of cardio exercises.  

Resistance Band Workouts

The resistance bands are typically used for people in physical therapy. However, bands provide resistance that can be used to strengthen all muscle groups through isometric and isotonic strengthening. Isometric exercises, like banded squats, involve progressive muscle contraction while you hold the joint in one position. These types of exercises strengthen the muscles surrounding the joints in a gentle way because there’s little movement in the joints. When you’re doing isotonic exercises, the band is gently stretched through the range of motion of the joint.

Strength Training 

This may sound intimidating, but strength training can really help unload on your joint pains and aches and provide some natural joint relief. When you strength train, you are essentially growing your muscles and getting stronger. As a result, you are unloading the pressure that is placed on your joints. Make sure to change your workouts and target key muscle groups. Pro tip: after your strength training workouts, be sure to stretch! Your muscles are warm, and when you stretch afterwards, you will increase your flexibility and mobility.