Late last year one of our myotherapists, Catherine Bainbridge, started developing lateral knee pain. She had just started training for the Melbourne Marathon and every time she went for a training run the pain in her knee would return. However, as she started to cut her exercise regime down, her knee pain got to the point where walking was painful and she started to limp.
Catherine stopped exercising completely and when rest did not resolve the problem she consulted her fellow myotherapists. Now, several months later she can run up to 12 kilometres – no limping and no knee pain.
For anyone else that has been injured doing the sport they love this is a huge improvement and Catherine is still working on strengthening her knee and increasing her running distance every week with the help of her myotherapy treatments. Without the Myotherapy intervention Catherine believes she would have had to give up running altogether!
What Myotherapy did for Catherine and her knee pain
Biomechanics: (Elite determined abnormalities in the way her knee and surrounding joints/muscles were moving): “My knee had too much rotation through the joint. This could be seen on my 1 leg squat. I had not had any knock injuries or falls to damage the ligaments/tendons in my knee so we looked at the areas either side of the knee joint. Important surrounding structures are the hip joint and ankle/foot. I had too much rotation through my hip joint i.e. my gluteals were not strong enough. I was pronating through my left foot, which caused my tibia to outwardly rotate. The inward rotating of the femur against the outward rotation of my tibia was too much for my knee joint resulting in my pain.”
Corrective actions: Why was Catherine rotating so much through her knee joints? What could be done to prevent this injury from re-occurring? “We found that during my work hours my foot position pronated (rolled in) on my left foot. I was rotating my left hip joint and putting a lot of pressure through the knee joint while putting all my weight on my right hip. I was able to modify this by being aware of my posture, strengthening the muscles surrounding the joint and taping the arch in my foot. I am now looking at getting some orthotics to stop my foot rotating in my work shoes.”
Myofascial release: “I was very tight on the lateral side of my left leg (quite common for people that run for exercise) I had deep tissues release on my glutes and lateral structures of my quads with dry needling massage and spiky ball work.”
Corrective exercise: “Through exercise I have been strengthening my glutes, strengthening my calves, working on my muscle patterning and releasing tight structures with the spiky massage balls as well as including some core activation work.
After seeking help from her friends at Elite, Catherine is now back to being healthy and active and is enjoying life pain-free. The scientific diagnosis and treatment administered by Elite Myotherapy was able to not only prevent further damage but repair the injuries caused.
Do you have a sport or work related injury? Myotherapy offers an affordable and tailored approach to solving your muscular pain issues and works to improve your overall health and well-being.
