The Runner’s Guide: 5 Ways To Improve Knee Pain 1. Improve your stride rate. Most runners over-stride placing increased strain on the knee as they reach forward. Shorter steps keep your legs underneath you and let ankles and hips help the knee absorb some shock. Grab a free metronome app from the app store and gradually work your way towards 180 steps per minute.
2. Get yourself mobile! Knees most often get painful when hips, ankles, or muscles aren’t doing their job and knees have to take on the extra workload. Foam Roll, stretch, and perform some dynamic warm-up and cool down activity before and after each run. 3. Build strength! Squats and deadlifts are a runner’s best friend to improve performance and help avoid breakdowns in form that lead to injury late in a run or race. Don’t neglect hip strengthening too, as this will keep your entire leg lined up properly so your knee can function as needed. 4. Make sure you can stay balanced. When running we spend the entire run on one leg, or in the air. If you can’t balance yourself standing still, doing so while running will be very difficult. Try balancing both with eyes closed, and on even and uneven surfaces, to make sure your body is ready for anything. 5. Make sure you have proper footwear. We are lucky enough to have excellent specialty stores that can assess your individual needs and get you in something supportive to protect your knees.
Seeing a Specialist If you have recurring knee pain or discomfort for more than 3 days, it is time to see a specialist. The ideal specialist to see is a physical therapist as they are medical experts in joint movement and function (kinesiology). A thorough evaluation needs to be done on your movement, running patterns, strength, joint mobility, patella tracking and proprioception. Only then, can the true source of the pain be found, treated and help you understand what you can do to prevent it from returning. If you are an avid athlete, our team of experts can look at your movement patterns and discover ways to make you both more efficient and more powerful to help improve your game. Get on the path to healthy knees and call us today for an injury screen. Discover how liberating it can be to run or exercise pain free.
Exercise Essential
Fruit Sparklers Recipe
INGREDIENTS
Strengthens glutes
• 1 whole watermelon • 16 ounces fresh blueberries • Bamboo skewers
SQUAT Stand with good posture, feet are shoulder width apart. Perform a squat by bending at the hip. Stop at the point where you cannot keep your lower back flat. Rise up by straightening at the hip. Repeat 2 sets of 10 reps.
Directions Cut watermelon vertically into 1 inch thick slices. Use a small star cookie cutter to cut out star shapes from the flesh of each watermelon round.Thread7-10blueberries into the center of each bamboo skewer, leaving enough space at the end for someone to be able to comfortably hold it,andaspaceat the top for thewatermelon star. Place the watermelon star on top and set the fruit sparklers on a serving tray. Cover and refrigerate until ready to enjoy.
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