Recently been getting knee pain when you run? Or maybe when you’re playing football on the weekends or at netball training? Perhaps you’ve even tried using an ice pack on it and some gentle massage but it’s still not getting any better.
What if I told you the problem isn’t even in your knees but is actually in your hips!
It’s very easy to get tunnel vision when we’re struggling with pain and to focus on the specific sore spot. But often knees are sore because other areas of the body are handling their own loads poorly, whether it is due to: a lack of strength, poor motor control or reduced mobility. With that inability to handle the load effectively, there’s a transfer of force further down the chain and in this case often into our knees.
While general lower limb strengthening can sometimes do the trick, often you need a more specific approach. The gluteus medius muscle is responsible for maintaining our hip rotation during single leg tasks, so I often have my patients doing exercises such as: sidelying clams, sideways step ups, and banded split squats to target this particular muscle group which has great transfer to tasks such as running, changing direction and acceleration/deceleration.
If you’d like to see some examples, have a look through my Instagram page
@david.thepaddlingphysio
