My Journey Getting out of Knee Pain (Pt 1)
10 years ago I started to find I was getting pain in my knees when I walked up the stairs. I would climb the 4 flights up to the office I worked in and when I got home I would take the stairs up to my flat and would often find myself treading carefully to climb without pain.
I started to think of myself as someone who has “bad knees” and was starting to get resigned to that for the rest of my life (this was in my mid-Thirties!)
At some point during this time, I started Monika Volkmar’s Dance Stronger programme and joined the gym, as an alternative to the Pilates cross-training I’d been doing for a few years. I didn’t make the connection immediately, but gradually started to notice that I was able to get up the stairs easily and without wincing. There were lots of great exercises in that programme which may have contributed but I think the Squats and Lunges were a key factor!
When I did mat-based stuff, however, particularly Hip Bridge, my knees were still uncomfortable.
It was only after training with Ashley López and having the opportunity for a private with her I discovered (doh!) that you have to actively work to squeeze your glutes yourself to lift the hips. If they have “gone to sleep” because of a lot of inactivity, for example, they may not fire “automatically”. In my case my lower back was taking over and my knees could have been sore for a variety of reasons (both biomechanical and neurological.) - whatever the reason was, when I learnt to use my glutes for this exercise my knees were fine.
I’d done a lot of Pilates before I came to this realisation. I had some great teachers over this time and I cannot believe that they weren’t ever cueing the class to use the glutes - I can only assume I wasn’t hearing it. Maybe my brain subconsciously didn’t “want” to hear it as it was too “hard” to get them working after hours sitting at my office desk. Even though my back and knees were hurting…? Who knows!
Anyway, I like to tell this story because I regularly have someone read it or hear me say it and they have that same lightbulb moment that I did with Ashley - sometimes you need to have something pointed out to you and then it seems silly to have missed something so obvious.
But it’s important to be kind to ourselves too - our brains are naturally trying to protect us by resisting doing something that it receives a stress signal for, as it thinks we are in danger!
There are two main takeaways from this
Build strength in your glutes! But actually it’s about building strength and improving function in the whole integrated system - muscles, joints, nerves, mindset…
Sometimes you are just not ready to “hear” something. Learning about how your own body works is like anything, there are always further levels of complexity to discover and layer after layer to unpeel giving a deeper understanding of your body and the amazing things it can do for you!
I would love to hear your thoughts on this one!
Do you use your glutes for Bridge?
Do / did your knees and / or lower back hurt? If it’s a thing of the past, how did you “fix” it?
What layers of understanding have you developed about your body recently?
Comment below!: