An IFAST member recently passed along the following article from the NY times.  When you combine my affinity for anything knee related with the fact that it alludes to joint health benefits of exercise, I was immediately intrigued.  Here’s the article:

Can Running Actually Help Your Knees?

So you read the title and think, “Cool, this is on par with what we’ve thought for years – that exercise can in fact be preventative to joint degeneration.”  But then, you come across the “No Duh” comment of the day:

So, the best way to ensure that your knees aren’t hurt by running is not to hurt them in the first place.

Oh really?

Now I don’t know about you, but damn near every runner that I’ve ever worked with has been injured in the past.  So all these people are destined to live with knee pain for the rest of their lives?

I guess the biggest issue I had with the article was they outline all the purported benefits of running and theorize on all the reasons that this seems to be true, but that it doesn’t apply to the vast majority of runners!

If there’s one redeeming quality in the article, at least they mentioned that strength in multiple muscle groups is important, including the hip stabilizers, quads, hamstrings, and core.

These are the exact people I wrote my Bulletproof Knees manual for.  Whether you’ve had minor knee pain or surgery, you have to focus on getting the entire kinetic chain back in order.  The hips are quite often the centerpiece of the puzzle – if you can get the mobility and stability back through the hips, a lot of good things happen.

So for those unlucky people out there who have injured themselves (like I did in the past) definitely give Bulletproof Knees a shot.  I feel it’s a great resource to help get you back in the game and performing at a high level.

Stay strong

MR