Muscle Medicine: The Revolutionary Approach to Maintaining, Strengthening, and Repairing Your Muscles and Joints (36 page)

Purpose:
To strengthen the adductors, although a body-weight squat also works the quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes, back, and stabilizing muscles of the core and joints.

Starting out:
Stand with your feet wider than shoulders’ width apart, feet parallel, and weight distributed evenly over your heels and toes.

How to do it:
Hold your hands out in front of you, on your hips, or behind your head. Keeping a straight back, bend your knees, lowering the buttocks down toward the floor until the hip reaches knee level, or as far as is possible with good form and no pain. Keep your weight distributed evenly over your feet. Contract your glutes, abdominals, and quadriceps, and squeeze your legs together to bring the body back to the starting position. Contracting the adductors will prevent your knees from splaying out. Do ten repetitions, held for no more than two seconds each.

Troubleshooting:
The depth of the squat should be challenging but should not disrupt good form or timely set completion. Keep your eyes looking forward, your back straight, and your head relaxed. Remember to breathe and don’t clench your teeth. Don’t lock your knees at the top or let them splay in or out during the movement. Keep your weight evenly distributed across the feet—don’t rock onto your toes or heels—and don’t lean forward. If there is a sharp pain in the groin or the knees, stop and seek medical counsel.

ANTERIOR THIGH

SQUAT WITH KETTLE BELL

Purpose:
To strengthen the quadriceps, although a front squat also works the hamstrings, glutes, back, and stabilizing muscles of the core and the body as they pertain to balance and safe back movement.

Starting out:
Stand with your feet wider than shoulders’ width apart, feet turned slightly out. Hold a kettle bell with both hands, letting it hang in front of the hips. If a kettle bell is not available, any weight (dumbbell, can of soup) can be used as long as it is firmly held.

How to do it:
Keeping a straight back, bend your knees, lowering the weight toward the floor until your hips reach knee level, or as far as is possible with good form and no pain. Contract the glutes, abdominals, quadriceps, and adductors to bring the body back to the starting position. Do ten repetitions, held for no more than two seconds each.

Troubleshooting:
The weight should be challenging but should not disrupt good form or timely set completion. Keep your eyes looking forward, your back straight, and your head relaxed. Remember to breathe and don’t clench your teeth. Don’t lock your knees at the top or let them splay in or out during the movement. Keep your weight evenly distributed across your feet—don’t rock onto your toes or heels— and don’t lean forward. If a pain occurs in the groin or the knees, stop and seek medical counsel.

FULL BODY/CORE

A. SINGLE-LEG TOE TOUCH

See page 167.

B. KETTLE BELL SWING

See page 168.

THE KNEE

INTRODUCING THE KNEE

The knee, along with the ankle, is probably the most injured joint in the body. Tearing the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is, unfortunately, a common injury in turning/twisting sports such as skiing and soccer. Tearing the meniscus cartilage is an all too common occurence for ex-jock and couch potato alike. Trouble can arrive with a sudden pop and the onset of pain and swelling, but it may have been

IMMEDIATE TREATMENT/WHEN TO SEE A DOCTOR

Sudden pain followed by swelling and difficulty straightening the knee or walking all suggest a serious tendon or ligament tear. Get medical attention. Likewise, if the knee “catches” or locks. As with any joint problem, check for any signs of infection—redness, heat or fever, and pain not connected to changes in activity. If there are any, see a doctor immediately. When the dire possibilities have been ruled out, you can assume you’ve got some kind of soft-tissue damage, usually a strain or sprain. The normal rules of RICE apply: Rest (keep weight off the area); Ice it; keep inflammation down with Compression (a compression bandage); and Elevation (bring the affected area above the level of your heart). It’s your call whether to seek out a doctor or therapist right away, but if you still can’t put weight on your leg after one week, it’s time.

brewing from years or decades of overuse, poor sports form, or silently deteriorating connective tissue.

The machinery inside the knee joint gets so much attention that it might be tempting to assume that the muscles around the joint play a lesser role. But that’s not the case. As discussed, the muscles soak up impact shock when the leg strikes the ground, helping the joint to resist injury. When injury does occur—let’s say the ACL tears—we can’t just focus on the joint damage to the exclusion of the other two elements of that interconnected system: bone and muscle. Unless we work on relaxing and strengthening the quadriceps and hamstring muscles, ideally before and definitely after joint surgery, that knee may not heal as well and may still have problems after surgery.

The way the knee is put together gives you an idea of its strength and its weakness. It’s basically two large bones, the femur (thigh) and the tibia (lower leg), that form a hinge that is lashed together by a latticework of connective tissue. The third bone, the patella or kneecap, is suspended in a tendinous sheath in front of the joint, moving up and down in a groove in the femur. The smaller lower-leg bone, the fibula, creates its own joint with the tibia, providing crucial support for the knee.

COMMON PROBLEMS AND CULPRITS

The four thigh muscles, the quadriceps, are the brutes of the front-of-the-knee region. They bring the lower leg forward by straightening the knee joint. The longest of the quads, the rectus femoris, also flexes the hip, the only one of the four muscles that crosses both joints. Running beside the rectus femoris are the vastus lateralis on the outside, and the vastus medialis on the inside, with the vastus intermedius beneath. Quad muscles occasionally tear from extreme exertion; more typically they overpower one of the others. If a stronger vastus lateralis overpowers a vastus medialis, the result can be a mistracking kneecap and painful “runner’s knee.”