Use Yoga to Solve Marathoner Problems: Knee Pain
PROBLEM: KNEE PAIN
Running isn’t bad for your knees. But overstressed, unstable knees are bad for your running.
Ultimately, the health of your knees doesn’t often have much to do with your knee joints at all. Instead, healthy knees rely heavily on good joint alignment and balanced strength and flexibility in your hips. For example, tight hips can place excess strain on your IT bands, which then stresses your knees. It’s an unavoidable chain reaction that can also then make good knee tracking near impossible.
Now lets do the work — use yoga to optimize hip balance and knee tracking — in order to align your stride for happier, healthier knees over the long haul.
SELF-TEST: HOW’S YOUR FORM?
Use this self-test to gain clarity about your biomechanics. It’s very likely that whatever happens when you lunge is also happening when you walk and run.
SOLUTION: ALIGN YOUR STRIDE
Use the Knees: Align Your Stride videos to:
Improve knee, hip, and ankle stability
Improve awareness of proper alignment
Increase hip and hamstring flexibility
Help prevent knee strain and related compensation injuries
USE IT DAILY
Use these top two solutions:
Use Align Your Stride as a non-negotiable warm up before every run — it gets the job done in less than 10 minutes. Use Hip Mobility Maintenance (a quick 10 minute sesh) daily. Swap in the 10-minute Quick Hip Reset as an alternative hip Reset.
Use the additional video recs below as time allows and to add variety to your Resets!
ALIGN YOUR STRIDE | PRE-RUN
ALIGN YOUR STRIDE
MOBILIZE YOUR HIPS | POST-RUN
HIP MOBILITY MAINTENANCE
Be sure to check out the other marathoner problems and solutions including weak glutes, tight hamstrings, and hip imbalances here!
Next week we’re getting into posture and breathing. Keep sharing how you’re using yoga with #athletesforyoga! We’re always available for personal Reset recommendations — DM us!