Knee pain is often quite a tricky problem to treat. One of the major stumbling blocks is not so much what the injury is called, but exactly how it got there in the first place. In my experience of treating hundreds of runners’ knees each year there is certainly a common cause that runs through many of them – and by many i mean a good 75%.
What i’m talking about is that the knee is often a victim of problems with the hips, or the feet, or both. In this case one could say (and many have!) that the knee is the ‘middle child’, it suffers from the annoying brother and sister joints above and below it!
For example, if you pronate (your foot rolls in) too much when you run then your leg below the knee will rotate excessively, irritating the tissues of the knee. Another example is if your buttock muscles are too tight. The buttock muscles, and in particular the piriformis muscle (the ‘athletes’ muscle) control the movement of your hip when you walk or run. If they are tight, then this will cause your hip to ‘stop’ rotating when you take a step, again resulting in a painful knee. If you have both of these scenarios happening at the same time (which is not uncommon, let me tell you), then your poor old knee will suffer the equivalent of a chinese burn with every step you take!! Not very nice.
In the Running Injury Oracle there are a set of videos called ‘Essential Tests’ which help you to self assess elements that may create the ‘chinese burn’ effect. These include, assessing hip stability, core stomach stability, leg length differences, whether you pronate or not, and whether your shoes are worn out yet. Other running injuries may sometimes be caused by these elements being out of balance, but none more than the knee – what a victim!
