Anterior Knee Pain Rehab (Runner's Knee) for BJJ | Part 2 (17 min)

So we want to avoid that. We want to make sure we've got the hip muscles working. Okay so we take a break. I'm going to go back and do the same thing again.

This all seems very basic. If you want to add a little bit of load to it you can always add a little bit of weight to it. If you want to add a little bit of weight to it you can always add a little bit of weight to it. So I'm going to add a little bit of weight in front of you here.

That's fine. Just to increase the loading, increase the amount of work you're making your muscles do. And even if your knees are quite painful, a lot of the time people are surprised how much of this they can do. So like I said I've had people with a lot of pain around the knee but I'll get them doing very small squats and sometimes I'll even get them to support themselves on the back of a chair or on a table or hand on a wall just to give them a little bit of extra support, take some of the load off.

So we can really make this exercise as easy as it needs to be. We just want to challenge that joint enough so we're getting some movement and some loading through it but at a level that it can cope with. So for this next exercise, this is a single leg exercise, we're going to turn sideways. What I'm going to do is I'm going to keep one leg straight.

The knee is slightly soft so it's not absolutely locked out but I'm not bending it. The other leg is going to come behind me and I'm going to lean forwards so I'm going to do a hip hinge movement as the other leg comes up behind me. I want to try and keep my back as flat as I can. And I switch legs.

So as you can see, it's having to keep your balance here which is part of the exercise. I don't mind too much if you want to put a hand on a wall to start with, just to steady yourself, try and use as little support as you can manage though. You can also make this exercise harder by adding a weight in either hand or both hands. And each time I'm just leaning forwards until I feel a little bit of a pull in the back of the hamstring when I'm coming back up.

Take a breather for a second. We're going to go back to the left leg again and do a few more on that side. And then we're going to do a hip hinge movement. And switch legs.

And we'll stop there and take a breather. So the next bit, you're going to have a sit down now. And we're going to use a foam roller. It doesn't have to be a foam roller, you can use lots of different things for this.

But all we're going to do is you're going to put it in between your knees and we're going to do a squeeze with the adductor muscles. So I'm going to squeeze as hard as I can as long as there's no pain there. And then we're going to hold that again about 20 to 30 seconds. You can use a medicine ball, you can use one of those big inflatable physio balls, you can use a pillow, any of those things.

And then just give the legs a shake out. And then we're going to do the same thing again. So the adductor muscles often get neglected when we start talking about knee pain. We tend to look at the muscle in the front and the back of the leg, the quads and the hamstrings, but we've also got the muscles that go down the middle, the ones that put your knees together.

And we've also got the muscle in the hip that lift the leg out to the side. So we need to make sure we're taking account of those as well. From there we're going to go into a quadriceps stretch. Now what I usually do is I'll have my belt ready.

So I'm going to lie on one side, I'm going to hook inside my knee and grab the opposite ankle. I want the top knee parallel to the ground, so it's not up here, it's not down here, and I'm just going to push my hip forwards. Now some of you may have trouble reaching your ankle in this position, in which case all I'm going to do is I'm going to loop the belt around the foot and I can use that to hold on to. But I'm going to concentrate on pushing my hip forwards.

I should feel a stretch down the back of that top leg. So once I've got the stretch on, what I'm going to do is I'm going to push back with my foot as though I'm trying to straighten my leg. So I'm just going to put a bit of tension through my quads, going to hold that for a count of eight to ten, and then I relax and I stretch a little bit further. So this kind of stretching where you put a bit of an isometric contraction in it, it's sometimes called PNF stretching.

It's a good way to develop flexibility and it's also good for pain reduction. Just watch that hand. Again, I'm just going to go for one more so I'm going to push back. I'm going to push quite hard so I'm putting as much effort into that as I can as long as it's not too painful.

And then relax, stretch it a bit further and remembering to push the hip forward. And then I'm going to relax and switch sides. So we can do the same thing on this side. Thigh parallel to the ground.

I'm going to bring this other leg up. I'm going to push my hip forwards. I feel a stretch on the front of the thigh. I'm going to kick my leg as though I'm going to straighten it.

This is where it's quite handy to have the belt to pull against. And then I relax. I can usually stretch a bit further. And once again, push back.

If you find it painful when you do that, just keep it on the edge of the pain. So only push as hard as you can until you get that mild discomfort. And then relax. And last time we're going to push back.

And relax. Again, I'm going to put the stretch on more by pushing the hip forward. And then I'm going to push back. And then I'm going to put the stretch on more by pushing the hip forward.

And relax. So as I keep saying, I want you to, with all of these exercises, I want you to work right on the edge of that discomfort. I keep saying this is one of the most important points as far as this rehab goes. We don't want you to be a hero.

Don't stretch too far and everything flares up. But at the same time, you need to be doing enough that the body is going to respond. So final exercise in this series, we're going to do a hamstring stretch. Now, I always like to stretch the hamstrings lying on my back.

Okay, so to do this I'm going to loop the belt around my foot, I'm going to pull my knee in towards my chest and then I'm just going to straighten my leg until I feel that pull on the back of the hamstrings. Okay, and again if I want I can put a bit of a contraction then I can push back the other way or I can just hold that as a static stretch. So either of those is fine. Now you'll notice that I haven't got my legs straight, so I'm not aiming to try and straighten it.

As long as I can feel that stretch right in the middle of my the back of my thigh, that's all I need. I'm going to hold that and then from there I'm just going to switch over and go for the other leg. Same thing again, do make sure that your head is relaxed and that the other leg is straight when you're doing this. Okay, and then I'm just going to repeat that once on each side and go back to the first leg again.

Again, I can pull my knee a little bit further in this time. I'm just straightening the leg as much as I can until I get that stretch. Switch over one more time. Switch over one more time.

And again, don't forget to breathe and relax. So that's everything for day two. Come back tomorrow and we'll do some more exercises.