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I suffered a knee injury back in July, that I had a friend of mine (he's a physiotherapist) look at briefly. His diagnosis was that I suffered either a minor MCL tear, or possibly a minor meniscus tear.

I have been working on it and it's almost back to normal, despite causing me some trouble in case of strong impacts on the fully extended leg, or with excessive strengths applied to the outer side of the knee. (In those cases after a 30 sec / 1 min rest I'm 100% back).

While so far I have been doing any type of workout I know involving legs in general in addition to tyring to lose some weight (being a little over 90kg doesn't help), I would like to focus more on strengthening especially muscles, ligaments, and tendons around the knee, to prevent future injuries as well as avoiding excessive stress on the injured area.

What type of workout should I focus on? Body-weight exercises and running preferred over gym, cycling, swimming, etc., due do logistic reasons.

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  • What type of "logistic reasons"?
    – rrirower
    Commented Jan 22, 2016 at 13:53
  • Where I live gyms and swimming pools are either way out of the budget I feel comfortable allocating to working out or located where it would take me more time to get there than actually working out. Cycling is potentially ok, except I don't have anywhere to store an expensive bike; my previous bycicle (second hand 30€, kinda broken down) was stolen too. I could roam around the city in a cheap bike, but it makes any itinerary that is even remotely interesting hard :)
    – Michele C
    Commented Jan 22, 2016 at 15:33
  • I can of course figure something out if one of those is particularly indicated, but otherwise would prefer to avoid them
    – Michele C
    Commented Jan 22, 2016 at 15:34

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In addition to squatting (light and heavy are both beneficial), I'd suggest looking at Ido Portal's squat mobility routines, as superbly organized and referenced by Antranik. Here's the link; look into the Mobility-Hips/Legs/Spine section.

These drills should get you started, but don't stop at that. Look for other such drills and also explore your own mobility yourself and ask what would feel good to do.

I've been taking care of both my knees for some time now; another thing that helped was gauging the amount of intensity (i.e. load, as in weight taken) used on knee-involved motions (such as squats) so that if it felt good to go heavy I did, but if it actually felt better to go lighter, I'd do that too. I've actually "reset" back to bodyweight-only movements for quite a bit of time as I felt it would give my knees a chance to rebuild, while still remembering that it needs to get strong.

Hope it helps!

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Most of the common leg exercises involve the knee (joint, tendons and muscles). Therefore you could just pick any exercise which involves the knee to strengthen it.

The muscle you should be targeting the most will be the muscles of the quadricep (front leg). By strengthening the muscle you will also strengthen the tendons. You should not over do it though, because knee injuries are very annoying in my opinion.

Keep up the good work!

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