Jan 12th, 2014
Amy asked The Guru for the following Physiotherapy Advice:
I have an old running injury which is causing me discomfort. It happened about 5 years ago when running. I just felt my right knee ‘go’. It wasn’t particularly painful, it just felt weak and I couldn’t put any walk on it. Since then I always have a small pain in my right knee on the right side, just below the knee cap.
If I do a lot of walking or running the knee gets very stiff. It has affected the whole of the right side of my body and I get pain in my second and third toes, occasional cramping in my foot, pain in my right shoulder and numbness and pain in my middle two fingers. I have started to do yoga to even up the muscle strength and now don’t run very much and cycle a lot instead. This has helped a bit.
Do you know what what I did to my knee and would sports physio or any other kind of treatment help make this better?
Thanks!
Jan 12th, 2014
Hi Amy
Most likely two different, but two related things.
Knee sounds like its where your ITB attaches into tibia and most likely pulls your kneecap far to much to the outside of your knee. The stiffness is a chronic inflammation of your ITB being constantly irritated as you don’t have enough control around your hip (more on that later…)
The toe stuff is neural in nature probably due to what you’re doing on your knee, which links to your hip. Knees and ITBs don’t just suddenly fail and breakdown. It happens because of something.
The something is posture, or more correctly lack of control of your posture because you’ve got a really stiff thoracic spine due to the way you sit, walk and run.
I’m not sure Yoga will even up your muscle strength but it will increase your flexibility. Your problem is that some bits move really well, other bits not well enough. Yoga will make the mobile bits move more and the less mobile bits will, well move less.
It’s not what you’re doing but how you’re doing it. Running badly is not good. Cycling will more likely than not give you problems, but later due to the limited loading and the prolonged static posture.
You need to get your mid back moving more and improve your gluteal stability (not strength). As long ad you know what to do and more importantly why, you’ll be back out there in no time. A good sports Physio will rock!
Good Luck
The Guru
Six Physio
