It’s kind of hard to achieve the holy grail of brohood – i.e., bigger, faster, and stronger (and tanned) – if you’re constantly banged up and/or hurt.
Our knees take a beating as it is, but if you’re a meathead this statement is exponentially true.
But even if someone says “my knees hurt!”……what does that even mean? Knee pain, or how smarty pants people refer to it – anterior knee or patellofemoral pain – is a very subjective term and doesn’t help explain the mechanism or cause of the pain in the first place. Hell, many scientist can’t even explain or agree what the term pain means or where it manifests from!
I guess to be more precise I should allude to the actual diagnoses of patellofermoral pain. There are many and it’s hard to pinpoint one major culprit over the other. We have patellar compression syndrome, patellar instability, general biomechanical syndrome, direct patellar trauma, soft tissue lesions, and overuse syndromes to name a few.
Too, we can’t deny that many people just move like complete shit. And while squatting is often poo-pooed or pointed to as Public Enemy #1 with regards to eating up someone’s knees, quite frankly (and more often than not) their squat pattern is atrocious. Sometimes all it takes a one minor tweak to their technique which can make all the difference in the world.
And then there’s other stuff like how to coach someone to perform a more “knee friendly” lunge, addressing weak hips, addressing alignment, mobility deficits, and engraining in people that you can always, ALWAYS train around an injury.
In my latest article on T-Nation.com I discuss all of the above and then some.
