My name is John Andreca. I am a physical therapist. I'd like to demonstrate a few weight bearing exercises, which are focused on individuals who enter our facility with lower extremity hip and knee arthritis. The first one we'd like to demonstrate is a sit-to-stand exercise. So, basically we're going to have Bob cross his arms across his chest. He's going to rise up from the chair, keeping his back nice and straight and then back down. Slow, slow, slow. Back down. One more time, back up. So excellent exercise, we all have a chair at home. Excellent exercise to work on the quadriceps, the hip extensors, the hamstrings, just a great global lower extremity exercise. If we wanted to make this a bit more challenging for him, we could have him stop before he touches down and then right back up. You do want to watch your knee angle and make sure we're not dropping too far below ninety degrees because that can really increases the stresses on your knees. So, if that's the case, if you have a lower chair you may want to put a pillow or something down on the chair just to get your hips a little bit higher up, off of the chair and off of the ground. Thank you, Bob. You can stand up. I'm going to move this chair out of the way. The next exercise is going to be a lunge. Same idea, where we're going to have Bob step with your right leg. Bring your back knee straight towards the ground, and back up. You can see Bob is standing next to a table here, just for stability to help with balance if that's a concern for him. If you're home, kitchen table, a kitchen sink, anything like that works just as well. Step and then come straight down. Same concerns with this exercise. You want to watch the knee angle and make sure you're not dropping below ninety degrees or so. And back up. Great. So weight bearing and non-weight bearing exercise is a combination of both of those types strengthening activities seem to be the best to really target and strengthen the muscles surrounding the lower extremity joint, which can help take some of the load and some of the stress off the weight bearing joints in individuals with arthritis. Thank you very much.
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