Your Personal PT, Rachel Tavel, is a Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) and Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS), so she knows how to get your body back on track when it’s out of line. In this weekly series, she gives you tips on how to feel better, get stronger, and train smarter.
Walking, going up and down stairs, squatting, and picking something up from the floor are all activities in your daily life that require healthy knees. If you like to push yourself even more to lift, jump, run or play any type of sport, you’re going to depend on a healthy set of knees even more.
Unfortunately, knee pain can easily stop you in your tracks and put your cardio and strength work on hold. Understanding why your knees hurt will help you treat them right.
The knee joint is formed by the femur, the tibia and the patella. Multiple muscles, ligaments, and other structures such as cartilage help stabilize and move the knee joint. Unlike the hip and shoulder which are ball and socket joints, the knee is a modified hinge joint and predominantly moves in two directions: flexion and extension (forwards and backwards, with just a slight amount of rotation). A disruption to any of the structures in or around the knee can lead to pain and dysfunction.
Due to the weight bearing function of the knee, it’s easy to stress the joint to the point of pain. Poor patellar tracking and muscle imbalances can cause a diffuse ache in and around the joint. Sudden twisting, jumping, cutting, pivoting or kicking can lead to more acute injuries such as torn ligaments. Years of poor body mechanics can contribute to wear and tear of the cartilage designed to help with shock absorbency, smooth movement and joint stability, leading to progressively worsening pain in the joint. The list of why one might experience knee pain goes on and on.
But the question is: What can you do about it?
While there’s no single way to address and treat all the causes of knee pain, most forms are treatable with the right person-specific routine targeting muscle imbalances and body mechanics. You’ll need to look above and below the knee joint (to the hip and ankle) for more clues as to what is causing your pain. Seeing an expert such as a Doctor of Physical Therapy who can analyze your movement always helps.
In the meantime, try these moves to strengthen the surrounding musculature and provide ultimate stability to this super important joint.
Your Move
Strengthen your glutes, work on single leg stability
Knee pain can often be caused in part by a weak gluteus medius. Weak glutes can lead to dynamic valgus, or poor biomechanical loading of the joint. Try lateral walking and side lying hip abduction with a resistance band around your ankles and forward step ups to work on this muscle group.
With step ups, make sure your knee is not going inward as you step up with one leg. Note whether or not there is a wobble in your knee at the top of the step. If it feels shaky, practice single leg balance on unstable surfaces, with opposite leg movements, throwing and catching a ball, or balancing on one leg and passing a 10 pound kettlebell in circles around your body 10 times in each direction.
Strengthen your quads
Begin with a simple straight leg raise. Lying on your back with one knee bent and the opposite leg straight, tense the front of your straight leg’s thigh by pushing knee down and straightening knee completely. Maintaining this position, lift leg straight up and down to height of opposite knee, maintaining a totally straight position.
Perform 10 reps of these then another set of 10 with the foot turned slightly outward so you feel the lift coming from the inner part of the quad more. Make sure knee is kept completely straight the entire time.
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