The warmer weather of spring means a return to outside activities like baseball, soccer, and tennis, while treadmills give way to pavement. It also means the return of sports-related knee injuries.
Can you ease the transition and avoid damage to your knees? Yes, you can. The team at Bahri Orthopedics & Sports Medicine Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, recommends easing into spring to ensure your body is ready.
You’re a year older than you were last spring, and even if you had no trouble in years past, this could be the year when time catches up. Your knees are a system of bones, ligaments, muscles, and tendons that support the incredible forces your knee must sustain.
If you’ve spent time over the winter working on agility, flexibility, and strength, then you’re ahead of the game. If you don’t train year-round, your risk of injury climbs.
While there are always accidents, you can sidestep most knee injuries with attention to sports-specific training, cross-training, hydration, stretching, and attention to technique. Let’s take a look at ways you can avoid springtime sidelines.
A key focus in preventing knee injuries is joint alignment. Just as your entire body has posture, so too do your joints on a more regional level. Your knee works at its greatest efficiency when it’s in line with itself and supporting tissue spreads the load evenly.
When forced to absorb heavy forces, an out-of-alignment knee can tax some of these supporting tissues while underusing others. Injury can follow imbalance. Working the glutes, hamstrings, and quadriceps muscles ensures better knee joint alignment.
Removing forward knee stress created with a forward lunge, reverse or backward lunges build all three key muscle groups.
From a balanced standing position, take a step back, landing on the ball of the back foot and kneeling until both legs are bent roughly 90 degrees. The back knee shouldn’t touch the floor. Push through the heel of your front foot to return to standing. Alternate legs.
Working your core, glutes, and quadriceps, wall squats start with your back, head, and shoulders against the wall and feet 1-2 feet forward. Slide down until your knees are bent to 90 degrees, remaining over your ankles. Hold for 30 seconds, then return to your starting position.
Great for your glutes, hamstrings, and core, glute bridges begin on your back with your heels on the floor (toes up) and knees bent. Lift your hips off the floor, creating a straight line from knees to shoulders. Hold for three seconds and return your hips to the starting position under control.
Using the same starting position as a glute bridge, straight leg raises keep one leg on the floor while raising the other with the knee locked in a straight position, as high as possible, while keeping the leg straight. Aim for 8 inches up to even with the opposite knee. Alternate legs.
Using a resistance band close to the knees to start moving to the ankles as you build strength, start a monster walk with feet at hip width, in a quarter squat. Take small diagonal steps to create a zig-zag pattern of 10-15 steps, then reverse the same number of steps.
For all of these exercises, keep your knees tracking in line with the middle toe, ensure the spine is in a neutral posture, and engage your core muscles to support your lower back. Maintain control through each exercise to focus on joint stability.
Contact Bahri Orthopedics & Sports Medicine Clinic when you have knee issues or to benefit from our sports medicine expertise. Call or click today to schedule an appointment.
