Hi, I am Dr. Molly with Your Goals Physical Therapy. Are you a runner or a would be runner except you’re suffering from runner’s knee and you are tired of being told that you need to just continue to rest it, you need to continue to ice it. Or worse yet that maybe you should stop running because your knees just can’t handle it.
If you have heard any of those things or you’re tired of any of those things, this video is perfect for you. I’m gonna talk to you about what runner’s knee is, then what contributes to it so that we know how to fix it.
I will not be talking to you about taking endless supplies of medication or going through any kind of surgery. So let’s get started.
Runner’s knee in a short sense causes pain at the front of your knee and it’s a very dramatic ache and it’s from the overworking of your quad
Your quad is the muscle in the front of your thigh. It goes from your hip bone all the way down and just past your knee and it attaches into your patella tendon and attaches just below your knee.
When it becomes overworked or fatigued, then it just causes the whole front part of your knee to ache. Now as a runner, you’re probably like, well, my thighs should be super strong because I run. How on earth could this be overworked or be so annoyed with me?
It could be a lot of things to be honest with you. Generally what happens is for some reason your muscle, especially if it’s only one side, for some reason that thigh is having to work more than the other side.
That could be because something on some muscle on the side that’s painful, is not working correctly or enough and that quad is taking over basically two people’s jobs. Or it could be trying to overcome a very tight muscle. It has to work hard because the muscle that it’s trying to pull against, right?
If you have one muscle on the front of your thigh contracting, the other side of your body has to relax so that you can flex your hip to move up and down, right? You can’t have both sides contracting at the same time. Nothing would move.
What happens sometimes is for whatever reason we have tight hamstrings or something else could be tight calves, really could be a lot of things. Now that thigh is not only having to control all of your body weight, it’s now having to pull against all of the extra resistance from that tight muscle.
There are a few strategies. I know I said we wouldn’t talk about ice, but really that is a viable option if this is just something that’s really recent and your knee pain has just started icing after you work out or when you’re uncomfortable for about 10 minutes really can help.
The benefit to icing is, let’s say that, that muscle is like your quadricep is working a lot and enough to cause swelling inside of your knee. By icing, you’re going to help push out some of that fluid and make sure that your quad can even function properly.
Because there’s this weird shutoff valve in our thigh muscle that if there’s even just an ounce of fluid inside of our knee it completely shuts off.
Icing can be a key part to any kind of recovery process just to help control the amount of fluid in that knee.
The second thing is you need to make sure that you’re stretching. Runners are great at running, but we do not like to stop to stretch afterwards.
Before that is just the boring stuff, I’ll maybe grab my knee or my foot for one second and stretch my knees out, but I’m not gonna spend 15 minutes doing that because that takes away from my run time.
Well, if your knees are bothering you, then I strongly urge you to get into the habit of stretching. If you’re only gonna be willing to do two stretches, you need to stretch out your thigh and you need to stretch your hamstring. If you’re open to it and you’ve been stretching your thigh and your hamstrings and with no reduction in any kind of symptoms, I would also try stretching your calves. I know that seems weird, but it does cross your knee.
I would also stretch your hip because if something’s happening in your hip, it could be pulling on your knee and causing things to have to pull harder or work differently, then they want to.
As a general rule, I suggest people get into a really good overall stretching program so that you’re not leaving anything out. I know that time is limited and stretching, It’s not everybody’s cup of tea.
To recap, if you’re gonna stretch and you’re gonna limit your time, you need to have a really good quad stretch. The front of your leg and a really good hamstring stretch to the back of your leg. If you’re willing to add other things even better because you’re gonna make sure that you’re not missing whatever muscle is tight.
I would also suggest that even if it’s your right side, that’s painful, you need to stretch your left side also because you may find out that there’s something going on on both sides or different things happening on different sides and you want to even those things out.
Everything should work synonymously or together. That’s probably a better way to say that. You want everything to be equal on both sides. You don’t want one side tighter than the other because that causes a dramatic imbalance.
Another thing that can be done, number three would be strengthening. I know that when you run you feel like that is a strengthening program. That’s how lots of people feel. They feel like that’s how I’m gonna get stronger and they have gotten really strong running, but that’s one way to train your muscles.
If you’re having knee pain, it may be because one muscle was able to tolerate the stress of running a lot better than another and over time there’s been a creation of an imbalance. The muscle that tolerated it is really, really strong and the other muscles are not and they’re not able to coordinate as well now, which is resulting in your knee pain.
I strongly suggest getting on a full body strengthening program because running is a full body sport. You need to have a strong upper body, you need to have a strong core and you need to have strong legs from your hips down to your feet.
If you’re currently having knee pain while you’re running, you may take a hiatus from running, but I strongly suggest that you now incorporate some of it. You don’t have to go to the gym. Body weight strengthening can do wonders for helping your knee pain calm down.
Just controlling your own body can dramatically reduce the amount of pain, if not completely eliminate it. Things like squats, lunges, heel raises, being able to do all of those things well and consistently. That is the key because all of those translate directly to the same muscles that you use while you’re running second.
Last is plyometrics. There is a different type of strength. Running is an endurance strength. Strength training is a different type of strength, right? Different ways that you use your muscles. Plyometrics is yet another type of strengthening in the sense that you’re stressing out muscles and bones in a different way.
You also are eliciting a response from your nervous system because of that quick impulse and being able to bounce and jump and absorb the ground, there’s a lot that goes into that.
If you’re suffering from knee pain, and especially if you’re like, I can work out all day, I can do all the squats I want, something’s happening while I run, there could be a chance that it’s the way that you’re landing that is causing the extra stress. By adding in biometric training, which is the fancy word for you’re gonna leave the earth i.e. jump and then land and practice absorbing the impact, making sure that when you land, your knee doesn’t wobble all over the place.
To make sure that your hip doesn’t hurt or your back doesn’t hurt while you’re doing squat jumps or jumps, actually jumping rope is a great thing. If you’re feeling pain or discomfort doing plyometric training, that can tell you maybe where the weak point is when you’re running.
That was a whole lot of information and there are a lot of things that can go wrong. Your knee may seem like it’s a pretty basic joint. It just hinges right? All it’s supposed to do is bend and straighten. Why can it hurt this bad? But really it bends and straightens and it’s a hinge between two joints, your ankle and your hip that can move all the way around, right?
There’s really no limit in the degrees that your hip and your ankle can move. If either one of them is having a problem, they take it out on that knee joint. Just over time it can wear things out, it can add extra stress to your thigh because it’s trying to do too many jobs. One of the fastest ways to make sure that your knee, one, doesn’t get more injured because as much as I made it sound like this is an easy fix, if you let it go and you do not correct this, you’re wearing out your knee joint, that knee is taking on more compression forces, it’s taking on more inflammation, then it needs to, and that’s going to erode or breakdown your knee joint over time.
I’ve met many people who have given up running and then they gave up biking and they’re like, but now my knees hurt all the time. It’s because whatever came out while they were running, which was such an extreme sport, it took a few years, but that same weakness showed back up when they were just trying to walk.
As much as it might be overwhelming and you’re too much to deal with at one time, really finding the reason for this knee pain now is much better than dealing with the repercussions later.
The fastest way to decipher all the information that your body’s trying to give you is to work with a movement specialist who sees this all day, who helps runners every day get back to running at the performance level that they’re looking to get back to. Whether they’re new to running and they just wanna run their first 5k, or they’re an experienced marathoner who is just irritated that their knee is bothering them for the first time at mile 15. That is what I help people do every day.
In fact, I even offer a running screening, which I’m going to offer to you at the bottom of this. There’s going to be a button that says running screening. What that is, is I invite people to come in. We watch you run on the treadmill, I run through some strengthening activities that let me understand your overall strength, balance, stability, your running mechanics, and we problem solve what’s happening with you and your running and then come up with a specialized program just for you to get you back or get you to for the first time your desired running performance.
The other thing I will offer to help people get rid of this runner’s knee, is a call. Not everybody is a hundred percent ready to dive in and come see somebody after watching a video. Completely understand that there’s always more questions to be asked.
If you prefer to start with a conversation, I’m gonna leave a button at the bottom that says talk to a pt and that would be me. You would fill out a quick form that tells us what time is good for you. My office would schedule that out with you and I would get in touch with you and chat with you for about 20 minutes to make sure that any questions you have about how I can help or what can possibly be done before you even commit to anything. So I hope that this inspires you, that this runner’s knee is not the end all, it will not be the end of your running career. In fact, this could be a really good intro to how you save your knees for years to come. Hope you’re having a good day. Bye.
If you are ready to end knee pain while running and would like to talk with a movement specialist, click the button below to be connected with Dr Molly.
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