Category: Injury Prevention

Eight Tips on How to Fix Knee Pain

How to fix knee pain naturally.

If you feel knee pain when you are running, walking, and exercising, try these free tips.

  1. Focus on excellent posture. Get taller – even when sitting. You don’t want to be leaning over your knees.
  2. Engage your core. It will help stabilize your upper body so you can have better posture.
  3. Align your feet and legs forward. Practice this. It may feel odd at first, but if you walk and run with splayed feet, that can affect your knees and hips.
  4. Align your arms parallel. Put them at a 90 degree angle when walking and running. Think “elbows back.” The key is to not cross your center line.
  5. Run, walk and exercise with purpose. Focus on your form. Always. When running, walking, doing strength training, yoga, golf, tennis and all other exercise, focus on your form and how your body is moving in space. Engage your core and put mind to muscle.
  6. Strengthen your quads (front of your legs). Squats, leg lifts, lunges and planks all great. Make sure your hips are back when doing squats. And, knees are aligned and over your ankles when doing lunges. If forward lunges hurt, try reverse lunges.
  7. Check your shoes. If your running shoes are super built up in the heel, that can encourage heel striking, which affects your knees, shins and back. Try a more neutral shoe.
  8. Lose that extra belly weight that is hanging over your knees. See my posts: https://virtualathlete.com/get-lean/ https://virtualathlete.com/weight-loss/

“How to Do Sit-Ups the Right Way”

Somehow I got away from doing the plain ‘ole sit up. Did you too?
It’s the planks, side planks, plank jacks and pikes that wooed me over the past few years. Time to get back to the basics with sit ups and push ups to shake things up.
Done correctly and sloooooowly, the sit up is a super effective way to activate and streghthen the abdominal muscles.
Here is advice on how to do them properly from the Godfather of Sports Medicine, Dr. Gabe Mirkin:*

Sit-ups the Right Way

Sit-ups the Right Way
Sit-ups can strengthen your belly muscles, but doing them incorrectly can hurt your back. Sit-ups should be done while you lie on your back with your knees bent enough for the soles of your feet to touch the floor.
Place both hands on your chest and slowly raise your head off the ground. Raise your shoulders about one foot and then lower them to the ground. Do this slowly ten times, rest a few seconds and then do two more sets of ten. After a week or two this exercise will feel easy, so add a light weight held behind your neck or on your chest. As you become stronger, you can use heavier weights.
There’s no need to do more than 30 sit-ups in one workout. To strengthen your belly muscles, you increase the resistance, not the number of repetitions. Keep your knees bent to protect your back.
If you do a sit-up with your legs straight, you place a great force on the iliopsoas muscles that increase the arch in your back, which can damage the ligaments and joints. If your belly muscles are weak, you are likely to arch your back excessively when you sit up and increase the chances of injury. If you are doing sit-ups to flatten your stomach, you need to raise your head only about one foot because going higher than that uses the quadriceps muscles in the front of your upper legs, not your belly muscles.
Give Dr. Mirkins advice a try!  Join me for 3 sets of 10 every day?
*Psst. Dr. Mirkin kindly allows me to post his content as long as I give him credit. He has a fantastic email newsletter with the latest health and fitness studies from the medical world. As a VirtualAthlete, focused on health and prevention, you will enjoy his yummy content. Grab a free e-book of healthy recipes while there!  Dr. Gabe Mirkin Website