Running Around Knee Pain
Have your knees ever hurt after running? Odds are they have. Knee pain is fairly common in runners, but the good news is it’s often not that serious of an injury. This means that as long as you’re able to tolerate the irritation and not flared up the next day you can continue training. You may be asking “I can still run, but it’s not very comfortable”. Well that’s a great segue into wha this blog is about. There are two main ways to adjust how you run to decrease knee pain.
The first way to adjust our form is to increase our cadence. When we look at cadence numbers we can use the general rule of increasing our current steps per minute by 5 to 10%. By doing this we help shift the forces from our knees and hips to our calf and ankles. This shift comes as a result of shortening our stride length and bringing our feet closer to our center of mass. To accomplish this increase in cadence we can utilize a metronome to give us a certain beat to shoot for with steps rate. As a general rule of thumb, someone running under a seven minute mile can aim at 165 and 170, while running under seven minute miles should be quicker at 170 to 180 steps per minute. Even better than a metronome is an app called RunCadence. With that you can run with your phone and it will tell you your cadence and give options to set for attempting increased cadences. If you have issues with achieving a faster cadence you can focus on driving your arms backwards. Your elbows should not cross in front of your body the only direction should be pushed backwards. This will naturally force your feet to turn over faster.
In addition to increasing cadence, we can utilize uphill running to allow us to continue training around knee pain. Running uphill decreases force at the knees and hips again transitioning it to the calfs, while running down hill puts a significant higher demand on the knees. Obviously running hills outside comes with an inevitable downhill right behind it. This is why I recommend starting on the treadmill to avoid the downhills for aa short period oof time while we decrease our knee pain. Utilizing a 3 to 5% grade will decrease force At the knees by 50.5% which may just be what we need to continue training with irritated knees.
Dealing with knee pain?
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