Knee Injuries and Prevention
Read this tip to make your life smarter, better, faster and wiser. LifeTips is the place to go when you need to know about Injury Prevention and other Exercise topics.
Knee injuries are something that most people deal with, espcially those involved in sports. Most knee injuries are caused from improper impact forces upon the knee joint because of improper lower body postural alignment. A good way to check if one has good lower body posture is to sit in a chair in front of a mirror.
Put a chair in front of a mirror and sit down slowly (as in take 8-10 seconds on the descent). Watch your lower body as you do the movement. If your feet look like they are slightly falling in towards each other or your knees are coming towards one another, you are one of the 'knee injury prone'. This is a sign of a few things going on in your alignment, probably that you have tight adductors (inner thigh muscles) as well as tight plantar flexors (soleus and gastrocnemius). This causes most knees to go in as well as most feet to flatten.
A good way to try and prevent knee pain is to 1) Stretch your legs more to loosen them up, in combination with 2) try squatting while keeping the weight on the outsides of the feet and making sure the knees stay apart, either over or outside (laterally) of the toes. Doing both those things will strengthen the outer thigh muscles (like the iliotibial band) and help your knees operate properly based upon your neuromuscular anatomy.
