Arthritis Exercise

Here are the best Arthritis Exercises that can help you actually relieve arthritis stiffness and pain.  There is a connection between arthritis and exercise (or actually the lack of it) that if you perform 10-30 minutes of joint friendly exercise you can actually improve and lessen your arthritis symptoms greatly.  It works on many levels:

• It can help you relieve arthritis pain and stiffness
• It can help you lower cortisol
• It can help you loose weight (fat loss)
• It can help you gain beneficial muscle
• It can help you repair all body tissues by raising growth hormone (the youth hormone)
• It can improve your mood
• It can help lower your cholesterol
• And it will make you look better too (and appeal to your family or romantic interests as well!)

Not bad for doing a little joint friendly strengthening exercises.  You can do them anytime, particularly at the onset of arthritis stiffness.  The more you do some exercise, the faster you will see arthritis inflammation and pain relief. The stronger your muscles, and the less excess bodyfat you have, the less the stress and strain on your joints.  To begin I recommend the following exercises that will actually improve arthritis and lessen pain:

• Water exercise or aerobics (swimming or walking in a pool with lukewarm water)
• Resistance Training (lifting light to moderate weight) for every body system, which is usually referred to as a total body workout.  Be sure to warm up and ride a bicycle or cardio equipment before you begin resistance trainng
• Yoga, Tai-Chi, Qi-Gong (these combine stretching, strengthening as well as meditation, which will lower your cortisol and blood pressure)

Also reccommended is for you to sit in a sauna, steam room or jacuzzi and let the heat increase your circulation.  Contrast showers are great too.  Sit in the sauna for 5-10 minutes, then take a cold shower, as cold as you can for 3 minutes, then go back into the sauna.  Repeat three times (3 hot, followed by 3 cold.)

Getting some correct posture training will help teach you how to sit, stand and move more effeciently and take loads of stress off of your joints and place them on your muscles by using proper body mechanics.  The Alexander method is really great for this.  There is also the Feldenkrais method and Dorn methods which are similar and can help you never experience a back ache or joint ache again!

Do what feels best for you, you know better than anyone else what works for you.  Try a couple of these exercises and postures and get recommendations from your local friends and neighbors as to which ones and which local instructors provide the best results for them.

To get a good idea of how you can perform a helpful exercise for arthritis, I’ve placed a video that shows some of the simple arthritis exercises you can do.

Seated Version – This is meant to be performed if you are currently having any trouble standing for small period of time. This is a great osteoarthritis exercise and a particularly good one if you need to perform a sitting arthritis knee exercise.

Standing Version – This is one of the best all around arthritis exercise routines that will help you achieve arthritis pain relief. It is one of the best rheumatoid arthritis exercises as well as osteoarthritis exercises that you can do if you are able to stand balanced on both feet.