Imaginary chair

Isometric exercises are when we contract our muscles against a resistance, but we don't move.

Wall sits and other isometric exercises get prescribed to runners with knee pain all the time in order to help them strengthen their muscles, which would then offload their knees and allow them to run without pain.

Now, this isn't to say that isometric exercises don't work in terms of actually making people stronger, because they do.

There is a good amount of research out there that has compared isometric exercises where you're holding still, contracting against resistance, like a wall sit, with things where you're moving against resistance, which would be like squatting.

We need to be choosing weights that are heavy enough where we are struggling to do eight reps.

If we can do more than 10 reps, then the weight is too light.

And importantly, we need to be progressing the resistance so as the weeks pass you should see that your ability to move weight goes up if the numbers on the dumbbells aren't increasing you are not getting stronger and you are not on your path back to pain-free running wall sits did not allow you to practically and easily progress your strength training they will not stimulate strength and power they will only stimulate endurance so they are not a very good rehab exercise for any runner with knee pain however that doesn't mean that they are completely useless there is a time and a place for most things and the appropriate place for wall sits and any isometric exercise where you're not moving you're just pushing against the resistance would be if you can't do exercises where you're moving for example if you want to run but your knee hurts So you are given some rehabilitation exercises to make your muscles stronger, like step ups and lunges and squats.

But when you try and do them, it hurts too much.

A 2023 randomized study, controlled trial, looked at adults with high blood pressure.

They did just three sessions of wall squats per week.

That's it.

After 12 weeks, their systolic blood pressure dropped by nearly 13 points.

That's more than most medications deliver and with zero side effects.

Even better, a follow-up study showed that four weeks of wall squats reduced arterial stiffness by over 6%.

That kind of change can lead to cardiovascular risk reduction of 21% just from one simple movement.

This thing takes you one minute if you can get that far.