Running Knee Injuries
Knee injuries are the most common running injury to sideline a runner. There are many different types of running knee injuries. However there are two that are very common, easy to diagnose and do not require surgery. These are Iliotibial Band Syndrome (ITB) and “Runners knee” also known by many other names such as Chondromalacia, Patella Femoral Stress Syndrome, Patella Femoral Pain Syndrome, Patella Tracking Errors and Malicious Misalignment Syndrome. One of the reasons there is so much confusion surrounding running knee injuries is directly due to all of the aforementioned names.
Iliotibial Band Syndrome is a running knee injury that usually affects new runners that have increased their distance too quickly. It also affects more experienced runners who do the same relative thing. For example; a new runner may get it doing their first “long” run feeling pain develop in the lateral (side) of their knee once they reach a certain mile in their run. The pain will usually get progressively worse striking sooner into the run, causing considerable pain after the run, hurting while going up and especially down stairs. Biking and swimming usually cause no pain at all and are effective ways to cross-train while recovering from Iliotibial Band Syndrome. More experienced runners will similarly increase their mileage to quickly sometimes after taking a period of time off from running longer distances. They may decide to run a marathon and due to their past success ignore proper training protocols resulting in lateral knee pain that gets progressively worse eventually forcing them to stop running.
“Runners Knee” or Chondromalacia also causes many runners to stop their training. It often affects female runners more than male runners due to women having a larger hip-to-knee ration resulting in a larger Quadriceps-angle. A large Quadriceps-angle is known to cause excessive foot pronation and excessive torque at the knee while running or jumping. This causes your knee-cap to track incorrectly eventually resulting in grinding and pain. The resulting situation is why the condition has so many names. It hurts when you run, therefore the name “Runners Knee”. Women get it more than men due to having a larger hip-to-knee ratio and so the term malicious Misalignment Syndrome is often applied. Patella Tracking Error simply describes what happen to your knee-cap because of having a large Quadriceps angle and the Latin terms Patella Femoral Pain Syndrome and Patella Femoral Stress Syndrome are simply saying “Your knee hurts” in Latin. Runners who have this condition report pain early in the run that may not get progressively worse during the run but the pain remains after running sometimes lasting for days. Stairs tend to cause pain as does prolonged sitting with your knee bent such as sitting at a desk or driving.
These two common running injuries are easy to identify and diagnose and even easier to treat and fix. There are two ways to go about treating Iliotibial Band Syndrome and Runners Knee.
The first involves the thing all runners to not want to hear “REST”. If your knee pain is gradually getting worse what makes you think it will not continue to do so eventually forcing you to stop running anyway? Except you will be injured further and have to rest even longer. Rest from running done at the right time can speed recovery and allow the runner to still achieve their goal. How much rest will depend on how soon following the INITIAL injury (when you first felt the pain) you rest.
The second method to treat knee pain is “Quick fixes” and home remedies. Most runners I see in my clinic have tried all the traditional home remedies like icing their knee, Ibuprofen and stretching and strengthening. There are vast amounts of information on the internet concerning these home knee treatments so I will not talk about these except to say that they often do not work anyway. For Iliotibial Band Syndrome there are a few of home therapy tools that can be extremely effective in fixing Iliotibial Band Syndrome. These are;
The Stick or the Pro-Tech Roller
Foam Roller or Trigger Point Roller
Pro-Tech Iliotibial Band Compression Band
SUPERFEET running shoe Insoles
Rocktape or Kinesiotape
Home remedies effective for fixing Runners Knee include;
Pro-Tech knee compression sleeve
SUPERFEET running orthotic insoles
Rocktape or Kinesiotape
All of the above self-treatment tools have been effective for many runners if used correctly. To purchase any of the above home remedies go to www.sdri.net/onlinestore
