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Hi, I’m Dr. Molly, with Your Goals Physical Therapy. Are you not doing your squats because the inside of your knee bothers you while you're doing them? You're not alone. I'm sure that you've tried doing stretches for the front of your thigh. You've tried stretching the back of your legs, but did you think maybe your calves need to be stretched? I know personally that I've totally forgotten all about my calves. My calves never hurt so I don't ever think about them. In fact, I went to get a massage one day and it was nice until the lady that was doing my massage went like this to my calf. (motion moving from my heel to my knee). As she did that I stood straight up, which was hugely embarrassing at the time. But we found out that apparently my calves were tight.
So I know that people often forget to stretch their calves. And often people are confused on how to stretch them. In a few minutes, I'm going to show you how to stretch them without having to do a whole lot of thinking.
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 Hi, I'm Dr. Molly with Your Goals Physical Therapy. I wanted to talk to women out there that are noticing that when they look in the mirror, they can see their knees are getting closer together. It's like their thighs are trying to touch in the middle and their feet are actually staying in the same space or rather the same distance apart. Now, is this just like an aesthetic thing? Like does, does it really matter if your knees are getting closer together?
It does. In fact, if you're having aches and pains and popping or clicking in your knee, it's probably directly related to the fact that your knees are starting to come in together and touch in the middle. Because this change puts a lot of stress on the outside of our legs and our knees. Our knees are not supposed to be that close. When your knees turn inward and get closer together you're getting one part of the joint that's stretched out and the other part that's getting compressed. This change happens slowly over time so a lot of people won't even notice it happens until it's too late and they need a knee replacement. They just think that they have bad knees. Hi, I'm Dr. Molly with Your Goals Physical Therapy. I speak to hundreds of people every month and a common theme is that people don't like to, or don't do squats because they feel that their knees are bad, meaning their knees hurt while they're doing squats. This is very alarming because squats are very important. So I thought I would go over and explain one, why your knees hurt while you're squatting. Then two, why it's important to work on getting through that pain, like figuring out what's causing the pain and then getting to where squats are not painful.
Hi I'm Dr. Molly with Your Goals Physical Therapy. I was asked the same question multiple times this week. So I figured why not talk about it? I was asked, "Why is it that my knee makes this grinding noise? It almost sounds like two pieces of wood rubbing on each other when I go to stand up and sit down." The interesting thing was these people were asking me this question only as a point of curiosity, because their knee didn't actually hurt. It just sounds horrible. And so they couldn't figure out why your joint would make a noise that just sounds like two pieces of broken wood rubbing into each other, and not even hurting.
My answer started with first talking about the anatomy of your knee. Are you trying to figure out what is causing the pain on the outside of your knee, like Melinda?
Melinda called me worried about knee problems that she'd been suffering with for months. Melinda’s left knee would ache when she sat longer than 30 minutes. Then when she stood up to stop the discomfort would limp for 3 or 4 steps before she could walk normally. She said her knee just didn’t feel right when she first stood up but it would work itself out after a few steps. She called me because she started to have difficulty going up stairs and was having to walk down the stairs sideways. Not being able to go up and down the stairs was interfering with her ability to do house work. She was willing to deal with not sitting or standing for long periods of time. However, now she couldn’t do her normal house work without help from her husband and kids. This was causing a lot of stress and resentment in her family. There’s a brace for basically every body part and injury so they must work, right? In fact, there’s a specific knee brace for patellofemoral syndrome, it helps by preventing your kneecap from leaving its track. Before we talk about whether the brace helps patellofemoral syndrome let’s talk about the symptoms of patellofemoral syndrome. An achy pain on the outside or underneath the kneecap, in addition to, popping or clicking in the knee while walking, running, standing up and sitting down or squatting. Feeling as if you have to bend and straighten your leg to warm up after sitting for longer than 30 minutes. This is not an exhaustive list but those are the common complaints from people with patellofemoral syndrome.  If you’ve had knee pain while you run, I bet you’ve considered running with a brace.
I frequently get asked, “Should I run with a knee brace?” “What if I wrapped my knee up really tight could I run?” “Which brace is a good one?” Rebecca had the same question when I met her. She’d been running with a knee brace for several weeks but found it very concerning that her knee STILL hurt while she was running. She thought she’d bought the wrong type of knee brace. During the holidays I’m frequently asked health and fitness questions..which I love! The questions I got this year were mainly about non-invasive knee pain remedies since several of my cousins have started to have knee pain. We’ve all hit that phase of life when your favorite music is ”old” which almost hurts as much as your knees ache. :) One cousin, in particular, told me her knees ache when she sits for long periods of time making her drive to and from work uncomfortable. For her the pain is not intense, just annoying. She could simply take aspirin to ibuprofen to get rid of the pain BUT she is worried about the effects of taking even over the counter medication daily. She tried a knee brace but that just made her hot and kept falling down her leg. She debated going to her primary care to find out what’s wrong. She didn’t go because she figured they would just prescribe pain killers, injections or surgery, none of which she wanted. You started a new exercise program or maybe just a new exercise, push yourself hard, then the next day something doesn’t feel pain when you lift your leg. Now you are left thinking “Did hurt myself?” “Does a strained muscle hurt to touch?” “What do I do now?”... These are questions my family and friends ask me. This is what I tell them. Yes a strained muscle hurts to touch. BUT that doesn’t mean you need to run to your primary care or a surgeon for medications, MRIs, XRays, injections or surgery. Let’s take a small step back and look at what it means to have a strained muscle? I was shopping at the mall I needed to sit down for a few minutes to feed the kids before going to the car. We sat at one of those little sitting areas in the mall. Naturally, there were other people sitting in that same area. One lady in particular was sitting in a chair rubbing her knees like she wanted to have a genie come out of them. After a few minutes the kids were settled and eating a snack but this lady is still rubbing her knees. She looked to be in her early 40s and average health so I couldn’t resist asking if she was okay.
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WE HELP ACTIVE ADULTS OVERCOME THEIR ACHES AND PAINS TO GET THEM BACK TO THEIR FAVORITE ACTIVITIES WITHOUT MEDICATION, INJECTIONS OR SURGERIES.
Dr. Molly McDonald
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