If Running Hurts Your Knees Do This
Because Running Doesn’t have to Hurt
The Key
To pain free running is strength through your backside, while taking care of your tissue.
Your knee (patella) is meant to bend, fully, and without restriction. For years we’ve been told that your knees going over your toes is bad and we’ve been lied to. Finally you are seeing a shift in healthy exercises that build strong knees.
No matter how much stretching you do, without strength you aren’t reinforcing the system to eliminate pain. Stretching is the band-aid, whereas strength is the cure.
First
Look at the opposite. In the case, the opposite of your quad is your hamstrings. As you strengthen your hamstrings it tightens the muscles, which loosens quads relieving tension on your patella tendon (the main culprit of knee pain).
This is a super common way of eliminating imbalances that cause minor aches and pains. We use our quads when we walk, sit, and do many things in our daily lives so it’s recommended to do twice as much hamstring strengthening exercises than quad to even them out.
Then
Now that you have strength, teach your tissue how to be strong through it’s fullest range of motion. That way when you only need a small percent of it (running) it’s simple and easy.
The easiest way to do this is to sit on your ankles. This is the deepest flexion you knees can handle and you can easily scale it by sitting on a box or a block, as well as make it harder by elevating your heels.
Getting into this position, and almost squatting out of it (see video example) so you raise your hips up will strengthen that range of motion through time and reps.
The Goal
Should be avoiding the need to “band-aid” the pain each and every time you want to run. Taking a more systematic approach to strength and mobility will build resiliency that just makes everything easier.
We all have access to pavement, and we all have to ability to move. No one should have be satisfied with pain in simplicity.
There is a reality where you run pain free.