By Kassia Garfield, owner MaxStrength Fitness
As a physical therapist and owner of MaxStrength Fitness of Niceville, I get asked a lot about knee pain and tendonitis. There is a lot that can be done to reduce knee pain early on, and then ways to reduce the progression of osteoarthritis if already diagnosed.
Strength is the biggest way to help with knee pain. What people don’t realize, is that having strong muscles reduces the amount of stress at the joint—the more the joint can be off-loaded, the less impact the joint itself has to manage. The stronger you are, the less risk of osteoarthrosis formation. Targeting the glute muscles and the quad muscles is the best way to help stabilize the knee and take stress of the knee joint itself. These muscle groups are the main knee stabilizers.
What if it Hurts to Exercise?
The tricky part about treating knee pain, once it has already started, is that the muscles still must be worked to increase strength and to reduce the pain. This means to strengthen the muscles, causing some pain is normal. I often tell patients that with the knee, having 3-4/10 pain is o.k. during strength exercises. Eventually, that pain will get less and less as the impact is reduced at the joint. There are some joints we do not want to aggravate, but with the knee, no pain no gain, does apply! There is a difference between pain and damage. Sometimes it is hard to separate the feeling that pain is bad, but especially with the knee joint, some pain is expected during exercise to improve strength and function.
What About Tendonitis?
Also, with tendon injuries—not just the knee, but all tendons—the only way to strengthen tendons is to load them—this means stressing the tendons also through strength training. The tendons need to slowly build an increase in collagen, the structure in the tendon that helps deal with force. I know it sounds counter-intuitive, and, yes, there are times that tendons need to rest to decrease the inflammation cycle. But, in general, to reduce tendon injuries and be preventative, we must load the tendons. To do this, we use high weight and low reps. Knowing that balance is difficult, and I encourage people struggling with pain to seek out a professional to help with the progression, loading and rest cycles to help with knee pain or tendon injuries. Here at MaxStrength Fitness of Niceville, we can help create strength changes, load tendons in a safe manor and be preventative as well as rehabilitative.
~ Kassia Garfield, Ed.D, PT, DPT, ATC, COMT, OCS, Cert. DN.
4576 E. Hwy. 20, Niceville, 850-373-4450, MaxStrengthFitness.com
