Knee Pain & Osteoarthritis

When I think of the knee joint, I like to think of exercising good “knee hygiene”. By this I mean that the knee is something we should be thinking about mobilising, strengthening, and supporting daily – just as you (hopefully) practise personal hygiene every day.

Often, when we don’t have pain in a certain area, we can get complacent about that part of our body and think it’s working alright! However, often knee pain in the future is caused by poor movement practise and postural alignment in the present. There are two main ways that people develop problems in their knees: the first is through some specific physical trauma (think: sports injury, car accident etc.), the second is through an imbalance between the four muscles of the quadricep group. The quadriceps or ‘quads’ are the four – yes four, not one – muscles running down the front and sides of the thighs. They run from the top of the hip to the top and sides of the knee. If there is an imbalance between these muscles - if one strand or group is stronger or tighter than the others – this can pull the kneecap out of alignment causing knee pain. Most often, the outer or ‘lateral’ strands tend to be stronger and/ or tighter than the ones running closer to the inside of the thigh.

A lot of good knee ‘hygiene’ then can focus on strengthening the muscles of the inner thigh and ensuring that all of the muscles of the quads are equally stretched.

At Leith Pilates we’ll have lots of classes focusing on mobilising the knee joint, correcting imbalances in the quads, and generally ensuring nice healthy stretched-out legs.

Be sure to kind to your knees every day! After all, they have to carry around the crushing weight of our existential dread.