Top 5 Exercises to Prevent Knee Injuries
Knee pain is a common complaint that is seen managed conservatively through avenues such as physical therapy. Because the knee sits between the ankle and hip joints, many of the symptoms you feel at the knee could be indirectly coming from ankle/foot and/or hip issues. “Hint hint”, figuring out the root cause of your problem so as to not chase symptoms may require you to look above or below the knee joint.
As we know now, pain is seen through a multifactorial lens, meaning that pain can be amplified by daily habits such as nutrition/diet, recovery strategies, sleep patterns, stress, and social/environmental factors. This is on top of looking at other workload factors such as prolonged and sustained activities that are performed throughout your day.
Potential limiting factors that we want to assess that could be contributing to your symptoms include looking at hip mobility, specifically hip internal and external rotation. Also, knee extension mobility, and the ability to create and sustain a solid quadriceps contraction, are of utmost importance as well. In addition, posterior chain strength of the glutes and hamstrings as well as ankle mobility to allow the shin to translate forwards carry a ton of importance when it comes to knee health.
Assessing these modifiable risk factors is a great starting point in the pursuit of addressing the root cause of your knee pain with the idea of expediting the recovery process to get you back to the purposeful movements that you enjoy to do.
Here are 5 movement strategies you can do to begin strategically addressing your knee pain: