I help people who are tired of their aches and pains get stronger, feel younger, and achieve a level of fitness they didn’t know was still possible
Knee Pain and What to Do About It (Part 1)
Knee pain is so common that most people just assume they have to live with it and the limitations it comes with, even if they’ve had knee replacement.
If you either suspect you have wear and tear in your knees or you have confirmation from a physician, it’s easy to assume there isn’t much of anything you can do about it.
And some people will assume that painful knees are a result of weak muscles around the knees and that strength training the thigh muscles is the answer.
And that is NOT a good assumption…. here’s why:
Approximately 95% of knee pain is not caused by the knee itself or weakness in the surrounding muscles!
And strength training the muscles around the knee can make the pain worse!
Ouch!
So what is the cause of knee pain then and what can you do about it?
You need to investigate two areas that most often create knee pain, and in this article we’re going to work on the first one.
Poor Hip Muscle Control
The muscles around the hip. and especially the glute muscles in the back of the hip, work to both stabilize the ball end of the femur and to create the majority of lower body strength and power.
If the ball end of the femur isn’t stable at the top, it won’t be stable at the bottom, and the bottom of the femur is your knee.
To control the knee, you need to control the hip.
Simple glute strengthening exercises won’t fix this either…. you need to build motor control and awareness of how your hip is supposed to work and feel when you’re on your feet.
This video will get you started.
Once you can get your hips working better you want to start feeling that during squats, deadlifts, lunges, step ups and in EVERY lower body exercise that involves your feet on the ground.
If you can’t feel your hip “load up” don’t do that exercise (in other words forget doing machine leg extensions and hamstring curls for now).
Once the hips start working more the knees will be less stressed and your pain will decrease or vanish completely.
Clients who couldn’t squat their bodyweight without knee pain have been able to return to competitive soccer and tennis by developing their hip control and strength.
Be warned… it takes TIME…. and it takes WORK!
But having less knee pain is totally worth it. :-)
In the next article I’m going to go over the second likely cause of knee pain and what you can do about it.
