Healthy Knees 1

Ever have these lingering knee pains? You don't really remember any moment where you injured your knee, but this faint pain seems to come and go as time passes. Where did it come from and how do you make it go away?

This article will deal with lingering knee pain that appears without apparent sudden trauma. If you fell off your bike and messed up your knee, don't read this and go see a doctor instead.

Lingering knee pain is often due to improper care of the two big muscle groups of the leg: the quads and the hammies. We'll take a look at the quads in this post and will cover the hammies next week.

The Quads

The image below are all the quadricep muscles facing you.

Yes it's in french, but you don't need to read what's on the pic. The importance is to understand the shape of the quads, where they come from and where they go.

What I really want you to get away from this is:

1. All those muscles you see form the quadricep. They all originate from a different point at the top of the leg but connect at the same point above the knee.

2. What is between the red dots. That's your quad tendon. That is where all the different quad muscles meet up.

95% of knee pain I see in people is due to tight quads. If you notice, these muscles are huge, and they all form one tendon. If you let your quads get tighter and tighter, they will pull that tendon up and it will in turn cause knee pain.

Tight hip flexors

You can see that the further left muscle attaches at the bottom of the hip bone. If you have tight hip flexors, your hips may be tilted down more than usual, which would in turn shorten that muscle. Having it shortened for long period of time will hinder your leg movement when your need to use it at full potential like during running or hiking.

So yes, paying attention to your hip flexors is important.

Ok now that you have some general understanding about your quads, how to you go about making them better.

Couch stretch