Knee Injury Prevention and Conditioning Essay

Have you ever experience a hamstring strain? Do you know how unsafe it can be? One of the common groups of people to go through hamstring injuries, are athletes who indulge in sports that involve jumping and explosive sprinting. In addition of hamstring injuries, they can be very frustrating to deal and treat with. The hamstrings are composing of tendons that attach three large muscles, the biceps femoris, semitendinosus, and semimembranosus. These three muscles helps one knee to bend and extend to his or her hip; however, when one or more of these muscles gets stretched too far and starts to tear, it may cause plenty of pain due to the pulled hamstring.

Hamstring Strains (HS) are identified by acute pain in the thigh with disruption of the muscle fibres, with 47% of all HS studies stating that the BF muscle is affected (3). This can be explained because the BF muscle tendon and muscle fibres are where the most common distribution of the ground force produced during running (3). Eccentric contraction is explained by a study from Guex (4) stating that between 75-85% of the running cycle the hamstrings are undergoing an active lengthening contraction. Having this amount of eccentric contraction upon the muscles has the potential to cause an overuse injury (4). At 85% of the running cycle, the SM, ST, and BF are stretched by 8.7-12.0% which is beyond their optimum lengths (4).

Hip flexion/ Knee Extension; Hip extension/ Knee flexion. Major muscles involved include the quadriceps, the inner thigh, the hamstrings and gluteal region. Also, leg strength in the calve muscles is important.

Most serious knee injuries in sports can be prevented but the key is to get the athletes to work on strengthening the quadriceps and the hamstring muscle

Consequently, all of these muscles are what enables you to bend your knee and to extend your leg straight. During physical activity, if stretching a muscle beyond its limit, then an injury will appear. However, if the muscle is torn away from the pelvis, consequently that might require surgery. Another option for care is Physical Therapy, they benefit you by regaining flexibility and strength.

While staying in the same spot, kick the legs backward toward the butt 15 times per leg. High knees help to strengthen the knees, glutes and help the hamstrings to power the legs properly. Bring the knees high toward the chest 15 times per leg. Strengthening the legs with these drills will help when running long distances. 2.

Hamstring strains have been one of the most common injuries around the world. Unfortunately, there has been a limited amount of success reducing the rate of this injury (Schmit, 2012). Although many researchers and doctors have studied the cause of hamstring strains, there are still many theories as to why they occur. One theory includes that there is an imbalance between the medial and lateral hamstring muscle that leads to hamstring muscle fatigue (Prentice, 2015). Hamstring strains are painful and prevalent in different types of activities. Most commonly these strains can be found in athletes that engage in running, skating, jumping sliding, kicking, and quick/fast motions (Valle, 2015).

Your knee is the largest and most complex joint in your body. When you move, the knees will support the majority of your weight and keep your hips aligned. But, if you have a knee problem, living with the pain is not really living life to the fullest. Whether your knee pain is the result of an injury, accident, arthritis, or illness; you don’t have to adapt to the discomfort nor live with the inconvenience.

The body naturally gets stronger the longer you perform a specific activity. When recovering from knee arthritis you want to strengthen your range of motion in different areas throughout your knee. This can be done by setting multiple goals. Goals are a way of pushing and challenging your body. One week your goal can be to bend your knee to a certain degree. The next week your goal may be to stand for a certain amount of time. By the end of the month, you will be able to see if you have met your goals from week to week. If you did, then you can move on to exercises that are more challenging.

These exercises build strength and endurance in your knee. Endurance is the ability to use your muscles for a long time, even after they get tired.

According to Dr. Thomas Haverbush, an orthopedic surgeon, a six week training program that was developed in Cincinnati, Ohio was designed to research possible knee strengthening techniques. Within the program, athletes were trained to rely more on hamstring muscles than quadriceps. This was done in order to protect the knee and currently has the possibility of reducing the ratio of knee ligament injuries in female athletes as compared to their male counterparts from five times higher to only one or two times higher.

Allowing for a full range of motion, the flexible knee sleeve provides pain-relieving support for tendonitis, sprains and strains throughout any activity including general exercise, cross-training, weightlifting and more

The main focus in the first stage of the rehabilitation problem will be to get 100% range of movement back into the athletes injured knee with no pain being suffered as he currently only has 70% range of movement and 2 months post-surgery the Fowler Kennedy Sport Medicine Clinic suggest that he should have full range of movement (ROM) in his knee (Werstin, 2009). It will hope to achieve this by introducing closed kinetic chain exercises (CKC) which are exercises that use a resistance such as squats and bicycling (Heijne et al, 2004) but also must remember that it is just as vital to maintain the highest level of strength and function possible in the unaffected knee as well, this is important as during the program we will use the unaffected leg as a comparison to assess the progress of the affected knee (Hiemstra et al, 2000). These have been chosen as according to Fleming et al 2003, CKC

Osteoarthritis is the most common joint disorder, and more than half of all Americans who are older than 65 have been diagnosed with osteoarthritis. However, recent US data has revealed knee osteoarthritis does not discriminate age, and there is growing evidence that osteoarthritis affects individuals at a young age. The annual cost of osteoarthritis due to treatment and loss of productivity in the US is estimated to be more than 65 billion dollars.1 With no cure currently available for osteoarthritis, current treatments focus on management of symptoms. The primary goals of therapy include improved joint function, pain relief, and increased joint stability. Although the exact cause of osteoarthritis is unknown, many risk factors have been identified including increased age, female gender, obesity, and trauma.2 Within these risk factors, the etiology of osteoarthritis has been divided into anatomy, body mass, and gender.

The quads include the rectus femoris, and the vastus lateralis, intermedius, and medialis. This muscle group shares a common tendon at insertion. The patellar tendon inserts at the tibial tuberosity, and within this tendon lies the patella. The patella is anterior to the femur-tibia articulation, and this sesmoid bone increases the leverage of the quads by acting as a pulley. The major contributor to the stability of the knee joint is the strength of the quads. The only muscle that assists in extension is the tensor fascia lata.