Knee Overuse Injuries

Your knees take a lot of stress during the day, especially if you are a sports person or someone who does regular physical activity. Often, if the load is too great, or there are bad biomechanics involved, then you can end up with a chronic injury. These can develop over time, and can come in a number of forms. They are very painful and can be quite serious if not treated properly.

Types Of Overuse Injuries

There are many different types of knee overuse injuries, and it is very important that you know which one that you have in order to treat it correctly. Here is a list of common chronic knee injuries:

* Patella Instability

* Runners or Jumpers Knee

* Osgoods-slatter's Disease

* Chondramalacia

* Patella Tendonitis

* Arthritis

* Bursitis

All of these can be a result of excess loads and stress on the knees that they cannot handle. Although they are very different in their causes and their treatment, it is likely that bad biomechanics and an abnormal stress on the knees have contributed and cause the injury.

How To Treat Overuse Injuries

There are a few things that you need to do to make sure that you treat your knee overuse injury correctly. If you follow these tips then you will be able to reduce your pain significantly.

• Ice: This is important as usually there is a lot of inflammation and swelling involved in the injury. Ice will help decrease this, and thus the pain. When the inflammation goes down there is much more chance that the knee will heal.


• Rest: This is extremely necessary. If you cannot rest totally, then you should do relative rest. This means that you need to stop doing what is hurting you. You can keep fit and train in other areas, but if it causes you pain then you need to stop.


• Correct Biomechanics: If you have bad biomechanics then you will likely be putting extra stress through the knee. This is a very common cause of an overuse injury and it is very important that you correct the problem. For example if your patella is not moving correctly, you can get a lot of pain, you can correct this with a knee strap and it will make it move in the correct position and take the pain away.


• Rehabilitation: Doing the correct exercises is very important. You probably need to strengthen the area as it is likely that you have an imbalance somewhere.