Skip repeating doctors and physical therapist fees. Skip surgery. Treat your knee yourself with tried and proven knee pain rehab exercises and advice.
Our knees get a lot of load on them, whether it is:
- Twisting, pivoting and jumping on the sports field or courts
- Pounding the pavements or climbing up and down stairs
- Or simply use over the years
Luckily, whether you have knee pain due to a sprained knee or arthritis, there is a huge amount we can do to help knees become pain-free, stronger and more stable without the need for surgery.
This guide helps you to improve your strength, control, and stability of all knees, whatever your issue. It will gradually build a “bulletproof” knee that has less pain and risk of injury because the muscles can simply handle more and control more.
- Knee Sprains
- Runners knee and IT Band syndrome
- Knee Osteoarthritis
What’s included:
- Why knee pain and injury happens
- What a good rehab plan includes
- Acute/initial injury management
- Stage 1, laying the base
- Stage 2, regaining full range and strength
- Stage 3, dynamic rehab and return to full function
Target muscles for resolving knee pain:
There is more and more evidence to show that the hip muscles play a large part in knee strength and stability. Have you ever seen anyone’s knee collapse in toward the other or do you kick your ankles?
That’s all down to the Glutes.
- 16-27% of people with knee osteoarthritis have weakness in their “butt” muscles
- There is growing evidence that working on hip strength and control benefits various knee issues, including patellofemoral pain
- A Stanford University study showed the long-distance runners with knee pain (mainly ITBS – iliotibial band syndrome) have weaker hip abductors that on the injured side
- Females with anterior knee pain (knee cap pain) have on average 26% less lateral hip strength
These are just some examples but there are much more, let’s just say your hip plays a large role in looking after your knee!
Quads, calves and hamstrings
These three muscles cross over and move the knee joint, so they need to be strong enough to absorb force and shock and move you, but they also need to be able to work in unison and be flexible otherwise they can put more load on the knee.
Flexibility: Having tight quadriceps (thigh muscles) or calves are a big risk factor for knee pain and something that is easy to address with the right exercises to really unload the knee
Strength: There two things we need here
- Balance between the quads and the hamstrings so that one isn’t too strong for the other and pulling at the knee too much
- Adequate quads strength. People with knee arthritis and patellofemoral pain syndrome (runners knee) have been shown to have less quads mass and if this isn’t returned to normal that knee is then getting overloaded easier and then pain hangs around – so simply we need to strengthen your knee muscles!