Are you Setting Up Your Knees For Pain & Injury?

Struggling with your knees?

It's one of the top reported areas of pain / injury across the sports arena, so I wouldn't be surprised if you said yes.

When we consider the knee, we have to take into consideration the location of the knee.

Slap bang midway between the hip and the foot.

Where else have you struggled in the past?

Have you had ankle mobility issues?

Do you struggle to "feel" your glutes firing? Are the hip flexors tighter on one side than the other? Same question for the adductors, QL's, even shoulders.

How about looking at your feet, do they look the same or different?

Does one have higher arches than the other? Are the toes pointing in strange angles or straight ahead?

Can you feel your weight differently in the left foot versus the right foot if you simply stand for a minute to feel it?

Knees, being in the middle of the leg have to deal with a lot of forces passing through them, and if the foot isn't providing a foundation for that force going into the ground, or if the big hip muscles aren't pulling their weight, the poor knee can easily be overloaded.

Granted, if it's a contact injury, it's the knee. If it's a non contact injury, there's a good chance that the knee has been set up to fail by the structures above and below it.

It's why I ask so many questions about your injury history, sporting background, etc Simply doing isometric leg extensions, backwards sled drags, backwards running and single leg squats is all great knee strengthening work and essential rehab. Please don't forget to look up and down the chain to see if the excess torque going through the knee can be spread out and included in pronation & supination of the foot, and/or internal & external rotation at the hip.

Once we can see where the excess torque is happening, we can work to reintegrate the joints to spread the load. Do that, plus the muscle and tendon strength work and you're knees become the durable, powerful units they were always designed to be.

If you want help in that respect, come see me:

AiM Assessment

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All the best

Dave Hedges www.DaveHedges.net