Anyone who has had any serious knee trouble, from a ligament strain to full blown meniscus (cartilage) damage or even surgery will know, muscle wastage is your enemy! The knee joint has to support your whole body-weight and is effectively two sticks on top of one another. Muscles, therefore, have a vital role in health and stability.

Your leg muscles are an extremely large muscle group and are used every day, so even a couple of days without use can leave you noticing a difference. Especially if you are normally an active person.

If you have had any sort of medical procedure or treatment to your knee you should always be given a comprehensive rehabilitation plan to restore stability and health to your knees. Unfortunately, we see in the clinic that occasionally there are problems with the rehab, so we have written this article to help better guide your rehabilitation.

Which Muscles Are Most At Risk?

Your knee is normally swollen to a greater or lesser degree, particularly after invasive surgery. This swelling restricts specific parts of motion even when the majority of the pain has gone. The specific ranges of motion avoided are normally full lock out or full bending of the knee. You will also subconsciously lean off the affected knee when getting up or sitting down. This leads to particular wasting of the Vastus Medialis Oblique fibers (VMO).Rebuilding this muscle, in particular, is of great importance in stabilizing your knee.

Rebuilding this muscle, in particular, is of great importance in stabilizing your knee. The VMO holds your kneecap in the right place, protecting against patellar mal tracking.

What To Avoid

When going through the rehabilitation, if you have degeneration, damage or arthritis (or are postoperative), there are a few things to be mindful about. Especially with cartilage problems, avoid methods such as squatting or “sissy squats” early on in the rehabilitation. The compression through your knees is not necessary and can cause irritation. Other exercises like single leg squats or lunges can also maximally compress the knee and are particularly unwise for cartilage injuries.

What To Focus On

Instead, focus on off weight bearing activities such as extensions of the knee, particularly the lock-out phase of the movement. Of course, you would do this with light weight. Using excessive weight particularly if you have ACL or PCL trouble will have a shearing effect at the knee when excessive weight is used. This said, as an exercise at a lighter weight, it is a rather useful one for focussing on particular parts of your quadricep group.

As a light warm up, One-Third reps on squats can be helpful. These prevent the knee from moving into a maximally compressed position, whilst allowing you to focus on the activation of the ever important VMO. As we mentioned earlier.

There Is More!

As you can see even from this short post, that there are lots of considerations to be made. If you have been suffering from repeated knee pain or have a need for a more targeted approach to you knee trouble, contact the clinic to arrange your consultation.

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