A Real Pain in the Knee

“Runner's Knee” is a big problem for anyone in a running sport, but especially for the track and cross country athletes. For those of you unfamiliar with the problem, I will boil it down to it's essentials, medical personnel can quit reading here as you will certainly cringe at the simplicity of my explanation. Basically, the knee cap floats around. Some sports, combined with individual body types, form an imbalance in the muscles, ligaments and tendons around the knee, which will move the knee cap slightly off track during some positions in the range of motion of knee bending. The result is pain. This is also the “Not Good” type of pain.

Many doctors will tell the athlete to quit doing the sport until it gets better. Reality shows that this is not the best solution. Sure it will ultimately solve the problem, but it takes a long time. We are also battling psychology here. If this athlete has that problem, it is likely due to being an over achiever that pushes him or herself too hard, thus the problem. That athlete won't sit on the sidelines. Instead that athlete will go back to the offending motion and “push through it”, causing far worse problems down the road. I have seen this happen again and again.

The best solution is to actively solve the knee problem. It will engage the athlete in a physical activity. It will also be an activity which fixes the problem long term and get that athlete back out on the field. Otherwise, the athlete will just go right back to the same old habits that started the issue in the first place.

One solution comes by way of that classic training tool, the Iron Boot, or as Bob Hoffman called them, “Health Shoes”. Basically, they are dumbbells for the feet. Here is a link:

http://www.atomicathletic.com/store/ProductInfo.aspx?productid=IBC

Until recently, the only option was the Iron version, which has an empty weight of about 5 pounds, depending on the straps being used. We now also have Aluminum Boots, which are only 1 pound. That may seem like a waste of time, but if the Runner's Knee pain is too extreme, that may be the athletes limit for some exercises. Here is that link:

http://www.atomicathletic.com/store/ProductInfo.aspx?productid=IB2AL

We will get into more on this later.

Live strong,

Roger LaPointe