Last week, we looked at the landing technique of Ryan. We saw how his knee's collapsed inwards when he went to jump, but were strong on landing. The collapse of his knee's at any point can lead to knee pathology - from ACL injuries that will keep you out for 12 months or more, to other types of knee pains - including patellofemoral pain syndrome.
What is patellofemoral pain syndrome?
Patellofemoral pain syndrome (PFPS) is a term to describe general knee pain that is not caused by a tendon, ligament, bursa or internal joint irritation.
What are the symptoms of patellofemoral pain syndrome?
The soreness around the knee cap is not localised rather is follows a diffuse pattern. The onset is usually insidious and can occur with knee bending activities, such as, running, lunging, squatting or climbing stairs. Sometimes, people experience knee soreness when sitting for extended periods of time, and so is sometimes known as movie-goer’s knee.
What causes patellofemoral pain syndrome?
The cause of PFPS is usually related to an increase in load. Load in the fitness and physio world is either internal or external and are factors you can train. Examples of internal load is heart rate and perception of effort during a training session. External load, on the other hand can include distance, frequency of training or the mass of a weight lifted.
PFPS typically arises when there has been an unusually high spike in load whether that is internal or external, or a combination of both. Increasing training load by more than 10 per cent per week predisposes one to injury. For example, increasing training load by just 15% per week increases the risk of injury to 21-49%.
In the case of PFPS, knee irritation may arise because a weekly run of 5 kilometres has increased to three sessions per week.
How does it get better?
PFPS is managed with load management and strengthening exercises. Load management is about understanding and monitoring how much, and how hard you are training and incrementally increasing or decreasing your training load depending on recovery after a training session.
Strengthening the hip, gluteal, knee and lower leg muscles is also crucial. Why? This is important because by strengthening the surrounding muscles of the knee joint one can spread the pressure/load around joints.
You can understand the logic behind strengthening with this example. If you did a push up on two fingertips, this would be highly uncomfortable as all the pressure is going through two fingers only. In contrast, if you completed a push up with your palms and fingers flat on the ground, this is more comfortable as the pressure is spread across the whole hand.
So, the exercises devoted to the hips, glutes knees and ankle are important for taking knee pain away because it is about spreading the pressure.
Why should I see a physiotherapist?
There are a number of different knee conditions. Your physiotherapist is able to assess, diagnose and formulate a treatment and exercise rehabilitation program for your individual needs. There are number of factors that can be addressed for pain management to keep you staying active and participating in activities that are important to you.
It is always best to check out that knee pain so you do not end up sorely missing out on activities that make your life awesome.