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Sore Knees

“They click and hurt when I go down stairs is the usual complaint.” Most people at some stage or another in some quest for fitness or general human activity will have a knee or two go ‘bung’. Just below the knee cap, on the inside(medial, we call that) and self diagnosis or worse still Goggle grief will have you looking for “a clean out” in a heartbeat thinking it needs it. Reco gets throw around not as much in these cases but arthroscope always cops a mention.

Your knee or patella femoral joint if we want to get fancy has a lot of information traveling through it in regard to force and balance, it is truly an amazing piece of kit. It has 4 Quadriceps(thigh muscles), 3 hamstrings, adductors, abductors rotators and Trivia, the longest Muscle in the body, SARTORIUS, is found down there. Anatomy that does some pretty cool things.

If all of these muscles work harmoniously together from a square and sound pelvis and the opposing leg the same, knee dramas won’t be for you. This is not always the case, trauma (snow skiing or football, knee issues come with this territory, things go wrong and there is a lot we can do to correct these injuries. What if you haven’t actually hurt it, it just started hurting. More than likely and probably you will be experiencing a quadricep imbalance, meaning the 4 quadriceps of the thigh work together at correct length and tension, controlling the tracking of the knee, if the lateral (outside quadricep) gets overworked it contracts and the balance of the knee goes out.

Stress as in downforce will bypass the medial quadricep (inside thigh muscle) the Vastus Medialis Oblique(VMO) and like a plant in the shade it withers away, so the knee cap(patella) gets pulled laterally (to the side) and with flexion/extension of the knee(bending/straightening) the kneecap jumps in and out of it track making it unstable and aggravating the attached patella tendon causing inflammation, this is patella tendonitis caused by patella tracking, very common, very simple to fix.

An experienced Myotherapist will assess pelvic alignment and quadricep balance to assess and restore perfectly balanced knees to climb every mountain and decend without pain.