What is “runner’s knee”?

There is a groove in your knee that you knee cap is supposed to slide smoothly in.  When it doesn’t stay in that groove, pain is felt around the knee cap.  The pain is most evident when you sit for long periods of time or walk up or down stairs.

Causes

A muscular imbalance in the quadriceps muscles (front of the leg).  There are four major muscles in the quads and for some reason (and there are many reasons that can cause this), one muscle is weaker than the others.  This causes the knee cap to slide improperly.

Treatments

Depending on the severity of the case, a doctor should probably be consulted.  There are a lot of things that can cause knee pain and none of them should be taken lightly.  However, many times, a simple exercise can cure or prevent knee pain.

While doing a squat, on the first set, turn your toes inside but be sure to keep your knee over your toes.  This strengthens the outside quad muscles.  On the next set, turn your toe to the outside; this will strengthen the inside of the quads.  On the final set, keep your toes straight ahead; this strengthens all the muscles equally.

If you do this for about two weeks every other day, your knee pain might eventually go away.

Low Impact Exercises

Finding other low impact exercises that will help strengthen these muscles will help to avoid repetitive injuries like runners knee.  One of the great things about a fitness boot camp is that we have a host of other exercises you will be shown that you can do without making an injury like this worse.  But as with any injury, make sure to let our personal trainers know about it ahead of time so we can make sure that you don’t make matters worse during class.