Does Rest Help Knee Pain?

If you have knee pain rest is the worst thing you can do.

I was recently talking to someone about an ankle sprain (yes I know… that’s not a knee problem but the concept works for both). And they were asking me if she should swim or ride a bike since she couldn’t run right now.

I said I liked the bike when I sprained my ankle… but either is good (I don’t like swimming or being in the water much).

Then I asked “what else are you going to do?”

And she said that’s it… just rest from running for a month per doctor’s orders and when the month is up she’ll be back to running.

We got into a discussion and this is where it translates over to knee problems, too.

See she was resting from running, and was just going to do the bike or swim because she didn’t want to gain weight while she waited to get back to running. Which is great… and I totally get it… but just resting from running for a month isn’t going to fix the problem. And she’s actually more likely to sprain her ankle again and WORSE when she gets back to running.

Swimming and riding a bike are good for cardio but she’s still resting her ankles too much. And it’s going to set her up for disaster.

I encourage you (and encouraged her) to take this month to strengthen the muscles that are weak… the ones that couldn’t support her… the ones that made her sprain her ankle in the first place. For someone with knee problems this would be strengthening the muscles that support the knee which are actually the hips and the ankles.

And for her it was strengthening the muscles of the ankle… since the ankle can go in all directions it’s very vulnerable and it can support itself.

Since the knee only bends and straightens it doesn’t support itself very much… I mean it supports itself from collapsing and giving out… but 90% of the time the knee is supported by the hips and ankles.

So for someone who tweaks their knee (or ankle) just resting from the activity and doing another cardio activity to not gain weight doesn’t fix the problem and can set you up for worse problems down the road.

(obviously if you have a broken ankle… or other bone… you have to rest that area but you can still strengthen other areas of your body while that heals.)

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