We are continuing with our blog series this week! For our 2nd installment of injury specific ailments we will be talking about Runner’s Knee!
Runner’s Knee a.k.a. Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome is one of the more common injuries among runners. It isn’t too detrimental to your overall health, however, it can cause a lot of pain and remain a nuisance to your every day running routine. Runner’s Knee can be caused by a number of things. Issues with the bio-mechanics of your body, such as a misalignment or a wide angle from the hips to knees (common cause for women), tight hamstrings or weak thigh muscles that don’t offer enough support to the knee can cause damage; runner’s knee can also just be caused by the daily wear and tear of running.
This level of injury can be taken care of by resting with a slow increase of exertion and intensity. This means, either stop running completely or reduce running mileage and intensity and slowly adding it back into your workout routine. Doing this will give your knees time to rest and recover. Along with rest, you should do weight training exercises to strengthen your hamstrings, thighs and hip flexors. This will add strength and support to your knees. Finally, after strengthening your muscles it is imperative to stretch out the muscles. Foam rollers also work wonders for working out those kinks!
Doing all of these things for about a month (depending on pain) will help immensely and you’ll be back to running in no time! Of course all of this can take some time and the pain won’t go away immediately. To really relieve pain add ice and compression after your runs/workouts to reduce any inflammation and relieve pain. 15 to 20 minutes of compression and ice from a Dr.Cool Wrap works great!
Pick up a 4″ Medium Dr. Cool Wrap to treat runner’s knee and relieve the pain.
See Part 1 of our injury specific blog series about How To Treat Plantar Faciitis!