Avoid Knee Pain on Exercise Equipment – Natural Body Strength Training

Posted by Angela on May 26th, 2007 filed in Fitness Moves

Have you ever stopped using exercise equipment because of a click in your knee or leg joints? Some exercise equipment, even a standard treadmill, can apply uncomfortable pressure to the feet and joints - which defeats the pleasure of doing something good for yourself!

Exercise equipment, such as a bike or elliptical machine, may be rotating your legs in a repeated pattern that’s not aligned in a way that’s good for your body’s alignment. Sometimes the seat of the bike is not at the right height or it could be your body height is just not suited to the machine’s design.

Knees are one of the most stressed joints of the body in terms of pressure and bearing weight. If you’re doing a repetitive movement you want to make sure you have the right weight distribution on your joints so you don’t make an existing body habit worse.

Proper support for the legs and the whole body starts with the feet. Look at your most well loved flat shoes or sneakers and see whether the sole is worn on the inside or outside part of the heel. This tells you whether you cave in on the inside of the leg or whether you’re more outside your feet’s natural balance.

One of the easiest ways to protect your knees is to become aware of your feet while you are walking, preferably on the ground so you don’t have to think about a machine. To get support for the “core” or center of yourself, bring your awareness to the inside toe line, and the base of the big toe and make sure you push off evenly from the toe.

Notice if you press evenly off the ball of the foot as you push off your step. Do you feel the whole ball of the foot? Natural foot push off, starts with big toe down first and rolls off to the outside of ball of foot, with all the ball of the foot contacting the ground.

Walking in the sand is probably the easiest way to work out your natural alignment and check your gait patterns. You can follow the tracks of your footprints in the sand and really see what your feet are doing from the type of imprints you leave.

If you’re footprints are splayed out like a duck, you’re very likely sending more stress to different parts of the knees and hips. Again, come back to focusing on the inside edge of the big toe and lining this up with the direction you are walking. You will not make every step perfect, but just having simple awareness of the pressure in your feet over several walks will start to change your sense of alignment.

When you’re using a treadmill machine and want something to think about while you’re doing it – start to notice how your feet are touching the surface. Check your feet alignment so they are facing forward with the motion of the machine. Where do you feel the weight in your foot? If you feel pain, then something is not right. Experiment with how you can change the pressure on your knees and thighs by pressing more on inside edge of the foot and the pad of the big toe and also shifting the pressure on the foot through the ball and heel.