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Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
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Prevention
By Mayo Clinic staffSometimes knee pain just happens. But certain steps may help prevent the pain.
- Maintain strength. Strong quadriceps and hip abductor muscles help keep your knee balanced during activity.
- Think alignment and technique. Ask your doctor or physical therapist about flexibility and strength exercises to optimize your technique for jumping, running and pivoting — and to help the patella track properly in its groove. Especially important is exercise for your outer hip muscles to prevent your knee from caving inward when you squat, land from a jump, or step down from a step.
- Lose excess pounds. If you're overweight, losing the extra weight relieves stress on your knees.
- Warm up. Before running or any other exercise, warm up with five minutes or so of light activity.
- Stretch. Promote flexibility with gentle stretching exercises.
- Increase intensity gradually. Avoid sudden changes in the intensity of your workouts.
- Practice shoe smarts. Make sure your shoes fit well and provide good shock absorption. If you have flat feet, consider shoe inserts.
It's also important to listen to your body. If your knee hurts, stop what you're doing. Pushing yourself may only lead to injury.
