These injuries, by definition, suggest damage to one of the stabilizing structures in the knee joint. Symptoms of instability, swelling, limited range of motion, and higher levels of pain are more common with these injuries and are all signs that you should have your knee examined by a professional before returning to running.
That said, any small amount of pain is a signal to your body that there is likely a vulnerability, like a weakness elsewhere contributing to poor body mechanics. Weakness and tightness, thankfully, can be addressed with the right strengthening and stretching routine.
Running forces you to load each leg one at a time with your full body weight, plus the force of gravity. Anything you feel while walking will be exaggerated and intensified with running, making your knee, along with the rest of your body, more vulnerable to injury.
A physical therapist can analyze your movement, look at your gait and the mechanics of your whole body, and identify what may be the true source of the problem. Why did one knee get injured and not the other?
Maybe it's because of chronic weakness in that one hip. Maybe that ankle sprain 10 years ago made you favor one side. Simply getting a diagnosis from an M. Schedule a visit with a physical therapist or an M. Thankfully, most running-related knee injuries are from overuse and not traumatic accidents, which means there are ways to intervene. Having an expert evaluate and tweak your technique can help tremendously.
A strengthening program, physical therapy and exercises, and manual therapy such as trigger point work can help, too. Jumper's knee — also called patellar tendonitis — is an overuse injury that occurs when a tendon is overloaded, causing it to thicken. I see this most often in younger patients who complain about pain in the front of the knee.
It can be especially painful when you squat, jump or land. Jumper's knee typically begins in adolescence or early adulthood. A sports medicine or orthopaedic specialist can help young athletes by evaluating running mechanics and prescribing strengthening exercises to help avoid re-injury. Other therapies include massage, extracorporeal shockwave therapy and infrapatellar strapping a bracing device. Athletes can also have injuries to the anterior cruciate ligament ACL , posterior cruciate ligament PCL , collateral ligament , meniscus , cartilage and tendons.
To make the same change on your own, purchase a swim tempo trainer and adjust its tempo to match your natural step rate while running. Note the number, increase it by 10 percent, and then practice running at this higher step rate without speeding up. In another study, researchers at the universities of Kentucky and Delaware used biofeedback to teach runners with PFPS to prevent lateral pelvic tilt over eight sessions.
In a one-month follow-up, a majority of the subjects had lasting improvements in pain and function. You can try this one at home by concentrating on actively contracting your right buttock the instant before your right foot touches the ground when you run, and doing the same on the left side. Other potential contributors to PFPS are improper footwear and tightness in the hip flexors, quadriceps, and tensor fasciae latae top, outside of thigh muscles.
Stretching these areas regularly and choosing running shoes that maximize comfort or minimize discomfort may help you get back in the game and stay there. Scientific evidence linking specific footwear choices or stretching protocols with significant pain reduction in PFPS sufferers is lacking, however. At most, shoes and tightness are minor factors in the PFPS equation, and your efforts to overcome the condition should be focused on graded exposure running, strength training, and stride modifications if needed.
The bad news is that it can be just as debilitating and last just as long as more serious breakdowns. These tips can help to minimize the impact of knee pain on your running, if and when it strikes. Curated running advice, news and perspectives for people who love to lace up. Photo: Getty Images.
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