Knee Strengthening – Quad leg extensions over roll

Learn how to control full extension of your knee. This is a simple strengthening exercise for the quadricep after knee injury or surgery.

  • Lying down with one leg bent and a roll under the knee we’re working on, we’re going to work on terminal extension using the quadricep muscle to help fully extend the knee.
  • We’re using a roll just to start the knee in a little bit of flexion and we want to work on lifting up the leg, trying to work on that control into full straightening.
  • This is only a limited range of motion but really working on control. Also trying to keep the hip out of there.
  • When you lift, see if you can hold for a couple seconds instead of just letting gravity take over and letting it flop down.
  • So controlled lift, hold for a couple seconds and if you can, keep the toe pulling up towards you and then slowly lower it down. So you work on some muscular endurance here as well.

You may find that this fatigues quite quickly, so work with good technique to fatigue, then take a break and aim to do two to three sets.