You can build healthy knees by developing strong legs and develop strong legs by doing just a few exercises each week to give them the strength, health and stability that you want. Here are some of my top tips:

1. When you squat, squat deeply and push your knees in an outward direction as you are going down at the same time as pushing your hips back and keeping your spine and chest as upright and tight as you possibly can, also make sure your heels are fully pressing against the ground.

2. Lunge, drop one leg down, hold two dumbbells and keep your body upright. be careful with this exercise if you do have sore knees and take it slowly as you want to go with the flow of the blood and the fluid surrounding that area so it can warm up and work effectively, and injure free, this is a great exercise for balance, strength and symmetry.

3. Leg curls are great as well because they will develop the back of the leg and support and strengthen the joints, ligaments and muscles to protect you from behind the knee.

4. If you are more advanced then you can add an overhead squat as this will engage the upper body and core too.

5. If you already do Olympic lifting by this point your legs are warm you can add a snatch, this will help with dynamic movements and will increase necessary stress to strengthen and develop you further.

No matter what stage your at you can design a programme from the above exercises to strengthen your legs and knees, you can build muscle, get slimmer legs and even improve athletic performance using these exercises.