In this post we discuss why sometimes knee pain has nothing to do with your knee, and what else might be affecting it.
If you’ve been struggling to recover from knee pain, it might be worth looking at the joints both above the knee and below.
The knee is fundamentally a hinge, with the patella (kneecap) acting as a pulley to increase the leverage of the quadriceps muscles and offer protection to the joint.
As such, it’s a relatively stable joint with only flexion and extension available, plus a small amount of tibial (lower leg) rotation.
So if your knee is continuing to cause you issues, it might be the victim of limitations either at your ankle, your hip, or even your trunk.
In the past 6 months I’ve helped:
• A runner with intransigent knee pain, get better by working on her foot and ankle.
• A gentlemen who was finding even walking difficult by focusing attention on a restricted hip.
• An athletic client, who’d previously had minor surgeries on both knees, get back to sport with a strength programme that focused on his hips, ankles, and trunk.
None of this is to say that isolating and strengthening the muscles that attach in and around the knee isn’t important. It is.
It’s more that, in an integrated movement system, limitations at relatively distant joints can have unexpected knock-on effects.
Summary
Pain is an indication that something is wrong, but it doesn’t necessarily tell you what.
By looking at your muscular system more broadly, rather than just in the immediate area of pain, you increase your chances of success.