Swelling of the knee joint capsule prevents muscle activation and weakens VMO, potentially leading to patella tracking issues (PFPS).
An effective VMO exercise ensures that your kneecap moves effortlessly across the groove of your femur, without rubbing against its edges causing pain or swelling. Without one, this could become problematic.
Foam Roller Exercises
If the VMO is weak, your patella may shift out of its groove when bending and extending your knee, leading to pain and sensations of knee buckling when walking down stairs, running or performing certain leg exercises. This condition may be brought on by overuse, injury or lack of stretching exercises.
Strengthen the VMO through specific exercises such as ball clench exercise, wall squats with hip adduction, twisted leg raise and floor extensions. Other quad muscle-targeting exercises may also strengthen it.
One such exercise is the Bulgarian split squat, a variation on a traditional split squat that involves facing your legs away from each other instead of parallel to the floor. While this version requires more stability than its counterpart, it still makes for an effective lower body workout while simultaneously targeting quads, glutes and core.
Foam roller exercises can be another effective way to boost your VMO by helping to untie tight muscles and fascia, both of which can become tight from overwork or injury. Foam rolling acts as myofascial release; although initially painful, you should find relief as knots unravel themselves over time.
To perform this exercise, sit on the floor with a foam roller under your extended leg’s calf and use it to roll up and down its side, from ankle to just below knee. When rolling, try to find tender pressure points, holding each one for 30 seconds before moving on.
Knee to Chest Exercises
The VMO muscle is part of the quadriceps muscle and runs obliquely toward the patella (knee cap). Weakness or failure to contract this muscle results in abnormal tracking of knee cap alignment, potentially leading to long-term Patellofemoral Knee Pain injuries.
There are various exercises designed to strengthen VMO function, and one such is the single knee to chest exercise, performed while lying on your back with both knees bent. Slowly straighten one leg until its thigh is parallel with your body before holding for three seconds before slowly lowering. Aim to perform this exercise 10 times each day until eventually increasing repetitions gradually.
Single Leg Taps is another helpful vmo strengthening exercise. This more advanced move involves performing a quarter squat on one leg with its knee in neutral, followed by tapping its foot around while maintaining good hip and knee posture to strengthen quadriceps muscles including vastus medialis obliquus.
Note that VMO lacks its own distinct nerve innervation like other muscles do and therefore it cannot be isolated. Therefore, to increase its function it would be best to increase overall knee stability via quadriceps group and use exercises which engage all four quadriceps muscles simultaneously – hence all exercises listed should be used alongside more functional strength training and plyometric exercises.
Knee to Wall Exercises
Start your workout off right by activating and strengthening the VMO muscle. This muscle is vital in the movement of your patella over the knee joint groove; when not activated or strong enough it may result in problems with patellar tendonitis occurring as the patella moves incorrectly over it.
Engaging and strengthening this muscle is one of the best ways to ease knee pain and enhance function, as well as prevent further damage or degeneration in the future. To do this, activate and strengthen VMO first when moving knee, keeping it active throughout all movements of kneecap movement – this muscle being one of the core quadriceps muscles responsible for moving your knee cap up and down.
Begin this exercise by sitting on the floor with legs in front of you and pressing them onto a ball placed between your knees, squeezing hard until you feel a contraction of your VMO muscles and performing 10 repetitions. Gradually straighten or bend each leg while maintaining this strong and consistent contraction throughout its movement.
Performance squats with added hip adduction by clenching a ball between your knees is another great way to strengthen quadriceps and develop VMO exercise. Clenching can allow deeper into squats without aggravating knee pain, and progressed as knee strength and health improve over time. For best results use either a squashy ball such as foam roller or towel roll as the weight until you know that VMO activation has taken place.
Step Up Exercises
The Step Up Exercise is a single-leg, lower body exercise performed on either a bench, box or stairs and designed to engage multiple leg and gluteal area muscles. This movement is particularly effective at activating VMO muscle fibers to remain active for an extended duration during movement.
Start slowly to avoid over-loading the knee, gradually increasing repetitions to 2-3 sets of 6-10 reps per leg. If any issues arise with this exercise, please visit Bend + Mend in Sydney’s CBD to be assessed and treated by one of their highly qualified Sports Physios.
Ideal training scenarios involve having a coach oversee your movements to ensure that the knee remains in an ideal position and does not hyperextend (which is common among athletes with knee injuries). Once your form has improved, higher weights should be used for advanced training to strengthen and stabilize your knee joint.
Step ups provide excellent training for the quadriceps, hamstrings and gluteal muscles in the buttocks – as well as engaging the core through being done one leg at a time. They also recruit adductor muscles in your hips for knee flexion assistance as well as calves as they require some foot plantar flexiblity for stability purposes.
To perform the step up exercise, stand in front of a bench or plyometric box with one foot on it and the other foot resting on the ground. Push up with the leg on the box to lift yourself off it, making sure not to collapse your knee inwards as you lower yourself back down again. Repeat this exercise by either continuing stepping up with only one leg for all reps before switching or moving up and down with each leg at the end.
Knee to Knee Exercises
Normaly, when the knee bends and straightens, its patella (kneecap) should move freely along a groove within the femoral trochlear groove. But if the VMO muscle does not activate correctly, pulling may occur which causes extra friction between patella and outer knee joint surface leading to pain and swelling in knee. Engaging in VMO strengthening exercises may improve their efficiency as well as help keep knee pain away in future.
VMO exercises consist of both closed and open kinetic chain exercises. According to previous research, studies have demonstrated that sling-based knee extension exercises with knee flexion angles between 0-60 degrees led to maximum VMO activation; additionally, closed kinetic knee extensions increased VMO muscle strength as well as value ratio between VMO/VL muscles.
One effective vmo exercise is performing simple leg extensions with bent knees while feeling for contraction in your VMO muscle. This exercise can be particularly useful for people living with PFPS as it strengthens quadriceps muscles while decreasing knee pain and stiffness.
Or you could do leg extensions while standing up, keeping the backs of your legs against a wall and sliding your back down slowly until your shins are parallel with the floor. Be careful not to allow your feet forward past knee height, which would strain quadriceps and hip flexor muscles. This exercise provides a simple yet effective vmo exercise you can easily incorporate into your daily routine; just remember it should be performed often enough that your muscles become familiar with contracting muscles when performing it.
