---
title: 'The Fastest Way to Fix Your Knees, Elbows, & Shoulders'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=GSwL3Lgw6zI'
video_id: 'GSwL3Lgw6zI'
date: 2026-06-28
duration_sec: 648
---

# The Fastest Way to Fix Your Knees, Elbows, & Shoulders

> Source: [The Fastest Way to Fix Your Knees, Elbows, & Shoulders](https://youtube.com/watch?v=GSwL3Lgw6zI)

## Summary

Squeaky-creaky joints are often a sign of tendon weakness, not just normal training wear-and-tear. This video explains that tendons require different training than muscles to stay healthy and prevent pain, especially as you age.

### Key Points

- **Tendons vs. Muscles** [0:02] — Squeaky-creaky joints are not a normal part of training; the problem is likely your tendons, not muscles or bones.
- **Tendon Function** [0:12] — Tendons act like cables to move your body and protect muscles by stretching quickly during impact, like landing from a jump.
- **Different Training Needs** [1:11] — Tendons and muscles respond differently to loads; tendons need specific training to strengthen, as they don't like what muscles like.
- **Strength Gap Causes Pain** [1:36] — If muscles outgrow tendons, it creates a strength gap, leading to pain—70% of sports injuries involve tendons or their associated muscles.
- **Steroids and Tendon Risk** [2:01] — Steroid use accelerates muscle growth faster than tendon adaptation, increasing tendon tear risk—seen in 1990s baseball players.
- **Clicking as Warning Sign** [2:33] — Clicking joints, especially with pain, can indicate a swollen tendon; clicking alone may be normal, but pain signals weakness.
- **Rest Worsens Tendons** [3:07] — Rest is ineffective for tendons; they need load to heal. Complete rest weakens healthy tendon parts and leaves damaged areas unrepaired.
- **Mistake 1: Poor Load Management** [4:11] — Suddenly increasing activity volume or intensity by more than ~30% risks tendon injury. Slow progression (adding 1-2 sets per week) is safer.
- **Mistake 2: Using Momentum** [5:32] — Momentum (bouncing weights) introduces harmful loads to tendons. Controlled reps at bottom positions are better for tendon health and muscle growth.
- **Isometrics for Healing** [6:29] — Isometric exercises (holding a contraction) maximize tendon creep and signal healing to scarred areas within 2 weeks, making them a top rehab method.
- **Exercise Selection** [7:21] — Choose isometric holds in the same movement that bothers you (e.g., bench press hold for shoulder pain). Hold for 30 seconds, 3 sets, twice daily.
- **Full Rehab Plan** [9:30] — Do 3 sets of isometric exercises twice daily for 1-2 weeks; then 3-4 times per week for 4-8 weeks to prevent pain from returning.
- **Long-Term Maintenance** [10:05] — Spend 5-10 minutes after workouts or dedicate one day per week to tendon exercises for permanent health and injury prevention.

### Conclusion

Tendon injuries are common but fixable with specific isometric exercises and careful load management. Consistent rehab (30-second holds, 3 sets twice daily for 1-2 weeks, then 3-4 times weekly for 4-8 weeks) can permanently resolve pain and strengthen tendons.

## Transcript

Squeaky-creaky joints are not just a
normal part of training. And if it keeps
coming back, problem isn't your muscles
or bones, it's your tendons.
>> It's the number one thing that causes
people pain.
>> Today, I'll show you the two biggest
mistakes damaging your tendons and the
exact [music]
exercises proven to rebuild stronger
ones in as little as 30 days. Think of
tendons as the cables that make your
body move. Whether it's lifting your
forearm up during a curl, pulling your
arm across your body during a bench
press, or swinging your elbow when you
hit a tennis ball. But movement isn't
their only job.
>> Imagine that you jump down off of a
couple of stairs and you landed on both
feet. Well, when you land on the ground,
you don't want your muscle to take on
all of the load.
>> That's Coach Q Wiley, a physiotherapist
who spent years studying tendons and
applying this research with professional
athletes.
>> So, tendon can be very protective of
muscle in that it can basically stretch
out quite a bit in a very fast, short
period of time that allows the muscle to
not have to extend as quickly.
>> Which just means your tendons need to be
absurdly strong. And even though lifting
weights is great for building your
muscles,
>> [music]
>> your tendons need a different type of
training.
>> The biggest thing that we're discovering
now and is that tendons don't like what
muscle likes to get stronger.
>> That's Dr. Keith Baar, a professor at UC
Davis whose lab has produced some of the
world's most cited research [music] on
tendon healing and strength.
>> And so, there's a big difference in the
types of loads that we do to optimize
tendon
versus when we're trying to target our
exercise for muscles or our heart.
>> So, if all your training builds up your
muscles faster than your tendons, it
creates a big gap in strength, which
explains why
>> it's the number one thing that causes
people pain. So, I do a lot of work with
professional sports team because 70% of
their injuries are related to the tendon
and it either the tendon or the muscle
that was associated with it not being
perfectly aligned.
>> This is actually why guys who hop on
steroids are usually more likely to get
tendon injuries. Their muscles outgrow
the strength of their tendons. And we
see the same trend in professional
sports. 1990s
baseball where everybody was injecting
himself with anabolic steroids,
they would get big muscles and then they
would tear the the tendon. Their
performance would go up and then bang.
And you know, statisticians can go back
and and determine who is taking steroids
based on their stats because it's that
predictable. But you don't need to be on
the juice for this to happen. And even
if you're not in pain, there are warning
signs that some of your tendons are just
not as strong as they should be.
>> Oh my god, that's loud.
>> Hear that? When a tendon is experiencing
any kind of sensitive thing, it it will
get a little bit fatter. You know, it's
a chubby tendon, if you will. And so now
in the shoulder, particularly, you're
asking that tendon to move and slide
through very, very narrow joint spaces.
And so just a little bit of a fatter
tendon, now you may feel that tendon as
it pops and rolls.
>> Now, clicking alone doesn't always mean
your tendon is weak or damaged. But when
it starts coming with pain, that's a
different story. And one of the worst
things you can do when that happens
>> [music]
>> is rest. The doctor says, "Well, just
rest it."
But a tendon isn't a tendon without
load.
So if you're just resting it, it's never
going to fix itself. Unlike most
injuries, tendons don't respond well to
complete rest. The pain might
temporarily go away because nothing's
stressing it, but the actual problem
isn't being fixed. In fact, the healthy
parts of the tendons start actually
getting weaker while the damaged part
never properly rebuilds. As a result,
>> as soon as you start doing anything
again, the pain is going to come back
cuz you didn't actually fix the problem.
And this only gets worse as you age.
When we're young and healthy and we're
doing all of these activities, those
little injuries never go away unless we
actually fix them. That's why a lot of
people who are super active and are
training really hard, And they'll get
into their 40s and they'll have a lot of
kind of muscular musculoskeletal pain.
>> Okay, so rest doesn't work. But before I
show you what does, the exact exercises
for each joint that can get rid of pain
instantly and rebuild your stronger
tendons in as little as 30 days,
>> [music]
>> you need to understand the two biggest
mistakes causing your tendon problems in
the first place. The first and most
common one is poor load management.
Think back to a time when you suddenly
increase your activity, whether it's
more bench pressing, running, or new
sport.
>> It feels fine at first until after a few
weeks
>> something gives.
>> It's less about being an overuse-related
injury, it's more of an more is just
more.
We can adapt to more, it just takes a
long time. Tendons
take a little bit longer to adapt than
muscle.
>> I actually experienced this myself. I
ran a 60-day experiment where I trained
one half of my body with really heavy
weights for low reps, and the other half
with light weight for high reps. By the
end of it, I got tendinitis on both my
elbow and knee on my heavy side. Now,
it's not because heavy weight is bad,
but just because my body wasn't used to
that type of training.
>> If you're increasing volumes or
intensity by more than probably about
30% that you're potentially running the
risk
>> of injury.
>> So, if you normally do four sets of
bench per week and hop on a new program
that has you doing 10, that's a recipe
for injury. A 30% jump is at most adding
one to two sets per week. And the same
goes with load. If you're coming back
from time off and 100 lb feels easy,
don't jump straight to 150 the next
week. Go closer to 130 and slowly build
from there. And you can also apply this
concept to any exercise or sport you do
outside of the gym, too. But there is
another more subtle mistake that almost
everyone does that damages their
tendons.
>> When we're lifting a lot, what happens,
especially as we're trying to up our
weights, is that we have a tendency to
use more momentum.
>> Momentum is what you use whenever you
bounce the weight off your chest when
pressing, bounce at the bottom of a
squat, or even hit a tennis ball or
swing a golf club. That's the stimulus
that's going to be detrimental to our
connective tissues. We're doing the
things that are actually introducing the
type of load that is hardest on our
tendons.
>> Now, even though Olympic weightlifters
use momentum all the time in their
lifts, their tendons have adapted to it
over time. Yours hasn't. So, as a
general rule of thumb in the gym,
>> [music]
>> if you don't have specific power or
strength goals, control the bottom of
the rep. It'll not only be easier on
your tendons, research also suggests
it'll grow your muscles faster, too.
But, even if you manage your training
perfectly, tendon injuries still happen.
And luckily, there is one type of
exercise proven to be one of the best
ways to heal and build stronger tendons.
>> What our work has shown us is that when
we do isometrics, we maximize the creep
in the tendon,
and we get equal signal for that load
through the whole tendon, including the
scarred area. By 2 weeks, almost
everybody is is like, "Oh, yeah. I I
don't I can do pretty much everything
again."
>> An isometric is any exercise where
you're contracting a muscle without
moving it, like flexing your bicep with
your elbow stuck in 90°.
>> So, the reason that we use isometrics is
because if I pull and hold, what's going
to happen is that's going to cause creep
to the healthy strong parts of the
tendon.
And as they lengthen, the next strongest
part gets load. Then the next strongest,
then the weakest part will get it. So,
if we hold it about 30 seconds, now the
whole tendon gets a signal. Now, we're
going to get collagen synthesis, it's
going to happen in a line fashion, and
we're going to make that tissue
stronger.
>> As for what isometric exercises are
best,
>> whatever motion doesn't feel good,
you're trying to find a way that you can
load that motion very hard, um, or hold
a position. So, for example, if I had a
problem bench pressing, [music] I'm
going to probably use something pretty
similar to a bench press, and just do an
iso hold there, because that's the
motion that's most sensitive, meaning
that I know that that's probably the
motion that that tendon is getting the
most load. Let me show you what this
looks like for each joint using
exercises we actually just added to our
fitness app. Starting with the shoulder.
If chest pressing is what bothers you,
set up a bench press, Smith machine, or
chest press machine with enough weight
so that you can push hard against it
without the weight moving.
Another option too is just using a
lighter weight and holding it halfway
through the rep. And if you're training
at home, you can do the same thing with
a push-up hold or by pushing hard
against the wall. But pick one of these
variations, hold the position for at
least 30 seconds, and repeat that
[music] for a total of three sets.
Whereas if your shoulder mainly hurts
during overhead presses, try these
instead.
And if it hurts during lateral raise
movements, then try these. And before we
move to the elbow, just keep in mind
that while you should feel temporary
pain relief right after you do these
exercises, you might actually feel some
pain as you're doing them. And that's
perfectly fine, as long as the pain is
not more than a three or four out of 10,
and as long as it doesn't feel worse the
next day. If it does, that's a sign you
got to ease back by using less weight or
just not pushing as hard. Now, as for
your elbows, if it's mainly your biceps
that hurt, pick whatever type of curl
bothers you the most and hold the middle
position of it with lighter weight. And
do the same if it hurts during
pull-downs or chin-ups. Whereas for
triceps, [music] do these if it hurts
during push-downs, and these if it hurts
during overhead extensions. As for your
knees, knee extension machine is
probably just the most simple, uh most
accessible. If you didn't have a
machine, getting your toes to be the
only thing that are on the floor and
your back and your bum are now up
against the wall and simply sliding down
the wall with your back and and letting
the knees come forward is also going to
recreate a very similar knee extension
type thing. So here is the full plan to
completely heal and rebuild your tendons
as fast as possible. First, pick one
exercise based on what joint is
bothering you and do three sets of it
twice a day, [music] once in the morning
and once in the evening. Your pain can
go away in as quick as a week or two
just from that. But to then fix the
issue for good, Keith recommends [music]
continuing to do your exercises three to
four times a week for at least four to
eight weeks.
>> If they feel like, "Oh, yeah. Hey, it's
better." and then they stop doing it,
it's just going to come back. So, that's
why the ones who really get rid of the
pain permanently are the ones who can
say, "This is something I want to keep
going with." But again,
>> don't stop there. If you want to keep
your tendons healthy for good and
prevent future injuries, you can spend 5
to 10 minutes after your workouts to do
these exercises or just allocate one day
per week. But if you want a step-by-step
plan that takes care of all that
guesswork for you, we've actually added
these tendon rehab exercises directly
into our app along with joint-friendly
exercise [music] alternatives based on
the specific area that's bothering you.
That way, you can continue training and
continue building muscle while
rebuilding your tendons at the same
time. Now, the app also coaches you on
your diet and you can try 2 weeks
completely free by scanning this QR code
or heading to buildwithscience.com. Give
this video a watch next if you want to
learn the fastest way to put on muscle.
Thanks for watching and I'll see you
next time.