Kinetic chain exercise advice

Regardless of the form of movement you are performing, you will be doing one type of kinetic chain exercise; open or closed. Open kinetic chain exercise (OKCE) is usually a movement where the foot is not restrained in any way (planted on the floor) and is most often non-weight bearing. Usually the main movement will be coming from the knee joint and if any weight is applied to the body, it will occur near the foot. A good example of this would be a leg extension movement.

Closed kinetic chain exercise (CKCE) is then going to be one where the foot is fixed on the floor and cannot move. Any typical weight lifting movement where you are standing in one place would be an example of this. This would include things such as squats, leg press, power clean and the snatch. Usually when you add weight to these movements you will add it so it's balanced around the chest area. These movements will focus in on the double contraction of the quads, hamstring, hip flexor, glute and calf muscles working together.

The sheer forces placed upon the knee however with the exercises can cause a disruption of the anterior cruciate ligament by shifting the position of the tibia from facing forwards to facing backwards. This is most often going to occur during OKCE so they are the ones you need to be particularly careful about.

On the CKCE side of things, normally the type of stress here that is experienced is one that's more compression related, which should be monitored as well however will often cause the knee to become more stable and decrease shear force. For that reason, these types of movements should be performed more often when you are just coming off an injury or surgery.

Furthermore, after you have recovered, it may be better to focus on including CKCE more often in your training program, as these are also more likely to help prevent injuries in the future.