Hi, I’m Doctor Cobb. Today, we’re going to be talking about a quick test that I use to try to help people understand if their knee pain while squatting is coming from a lack of pelvic or trunk stabilization.
So usually we get athletes coming in all the time, and one of the issues that they’re complaining about is knee pain going up stairs, going down stairs or particularly while they’re in the midst of exercising and squatting.
So an easy way that you can figure out if the trunk is involved in this, a lack of maybe coordination or control in the trunk, is causing the knee pain is to use an exercise band.
The simple way that you do this is you start off without the band. You do some squats and you get an idea of what range of motion you can achieve before the pain kicks in, or right as a pain kicks in.
Let’s say it’s on my right side and I’m feeling it right about here. You note that, or you take a picture of it. You’re then going to grab a band and attach it laterally, so that you’re going to get a little bit of rotational pull. You’re going to take the band, push it out in front of you, and then repeat the same squatting motion. All right.
Do that three or four times and all that you’re trying to figure out is does the addition of rotational tension to my pelvis and trunk, decrease or increase my knee pain. You try it first from the right, you then spin around and try it from the left. If you find that adding in some tension dramatically reduces the pain that you’re experiencing, you need to remember that the knee is attached to the rest of the body and your knee pain may be coming from a lack of core control, which is something that you can address very differently than things that we would need to do specifically just for the knee.
So give this a shot. Let us know how it goes. And remember in our next video I’m going to be showing you a couple of exercises that you can use based off what you’ve found with this particular test.
