Love Treadmills But Have a Knee Injury?

Tim from Gym Fit Out to the rescue!:)

Runners knee is the bind of the treadmill lover if they don’t know how to deal with it quickly and effectively.

To illustrate the point, let me tell you a story.

It was 10 years ago and I was a personal trainer and fitness instructor at one of the UK’s most successful gyms – Cannons Health Club and Spa in Warwickshire.

My fitness manager, an avid runner got a knee injury and had to stop competing, and it stopped him competing for 6 months, the sad thing it could have been fixed in 2 hours, I’m not joking!

How to figure out if you’ve got runners knee and what to do to fix it in a matter of hours not months.

So, if you’re pounding the treadmill every day and you get pain in the side of one or both knees this is what you should do and why you should do it.

You see repeated treadmill work will be repeated use of the ITB (Illial Tibial Band), it’s a long, thin muscle that runs from the hip and connects just below the knee into the shin bone

Here’s a diagram showing the side of the leg and the piece of connective tissue called – the ITB:

When you’re on the treadmill, constantly working this muscle it can get too short and this pulls the knee to one angle and you’ll get either lots of pain in the knee and not be able to walk or one of these, not very much fun.

The good news is that because the ITB is a kind of muscle you can use massage, stretching and trigger point therapy (massaging out the knots in the muscle) to completely fix the problem.

Here are my top 2 fixes so you can fix this problem and get back to running on a treadmill ASAP!

ITB stretch.

Up to 10 minutes each time, as many times as you can do it each day, I would suggest a minimum of 3 minutes 3 x per day every day for 2 weeks.

Here’s how to do it:

This is my 2nd top tip. Trigger point therapy to help your muscle/ITB recover:

Perform – for up to 20 minutes, focusing on the painful parts of this muscle/muscle sheath. On each side. Do this a minimum of 2 x per week for 4 weeks minimum.

They are literally all you need to do to fix this common knee problem among runners who run on treadmills regularly or used to!

Come and see us for advice and help with your training, we are always there for you.

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