Today we have decided to discuss a really important and vital focus. The focus, due to which some of our comrades drop trainings in the worst case scenario, and at best they try to avoid the muscles-gaining crouch stand. In other words we will speak today about knee aches. And curiously enough, that the offenders of these pains are the owners of those knees, what are painful.
There are a lot of reasons why sensation of pains can emerge:
- Incorrect food intake;
- Soft muscle flexing before training or its absence, it refers as to general flexing and to special one;
- Overdeveloping of one antagonist muscle group to the prejudice of others;
- Incorrect technique of exercises;
- Too high exertions;
- The neglect of stretching or its incorrect performance.
Let us consider these reasons more or less closely
The first reason: incorrect food intake
The quantity of articles, brochures, and video reviews about healthy and simply correct nutrition is really impressive. The secret still is why do people just continue to ignore the importance of sensible nutrition? It refers not only to the health in general (chips, baked breads, McDonalds, and other food rubbish) but to the nutrition in order to preserve the joints from injuries.
Those boys and girls working in the gym know very well the importance of nutrition for muscle building and for fat burning. But quite less people know that joints also need healthy nutrition: an organism needs not only proteins, fats, and carbon hydrates but always micro- and macro elements.
Simply defined if an organism doesn’t obtain enough fats and water (I am silent about keeping the water regime, it was mentioned in the article “Why is it so important to drink water?”) such a „starvation” will lead to the situation when the organism will not synthesize necessary amount of liquid. It is a main reason of joints wastage.
We will not raise a point about nutrition to minimize the risk of joint injuries or what to eat to combat the emerging problem. Our purpose today is to get outside of the reasons.
The second reason: soft muscle flexing before training or its absence.
If there is no normal flexing before the training it will finally lead to a trauma. Further everything depends on luckiness – whether the injury will be serious or a sportsman will come of break in the gym during two-three months.
Doing the general flexing before the training you raise the body temperature and the whole organism receives the preparation for hard work. The special flexing is imminently the preparation of concrete muscle groups and joints with ligaments for the work with weights. Moreover, the flexing is preparing our central nervous system to the start. And without the participation of the CNS any training is turning into nail biting.
The third reason: overdeveloping of one antagonist muscle group to the prejudice of others.
This information is rare in occurrence in the Internet but it is true, very often this is the reason of injuries production and knee joint problems.
Speaking about knees, it is clear that we like quadriceps more and we train them more. At the same time we forget about quadriceps’s antagonist-muscle – biceps femoris. This situation is more frequently happened among misses.
It happens that initially girls’ biceps is two times less and four times weaker than quadriceps. This imbalance, first of all in power, leads to the situation, when all the exercises are shifting to the side of one muscle. And that results in overwork and wastage of joints. So stay focused while you are training your legs.
The fourth reason: incorrect technique of exercises.
If you hold an opinion poll and ask sportsman how deep may you sit down not to dislocate the knee, the most of them will answer – till half-knee band: when your hips form a parallel with a floor. And yes, the idea that a half-knee band is safer than full crouch stands used to exist. But as is the case, the truth is more horrible! A half-knee band is much more dangerous.
This reason, an incorrect technique, is very hoar but we will actually talk about it. But we will not speak about subtleties of technique itself, but about deepness of crouch while you are crouching with weight. If we ask people in the gym about the deepness which will not injure our knees, the most of them will answer that the safest position is half-knee band, when the hips parallel the floor. That is why the high weights will be very dangerous for your knees.
In point of fact when you are trying to jouk to the parallel with floor. i.e. a half-knee band, you are trying to stop not only by muscles but by joints too. And knee joints are frail. That’s why it is much safer to crouch as deep as stretching and feel of comfort allow. A full crouch stand doesn’t overwork the joints as a half-knee band does. In this case they will serve longer without painful feelings and injuries.
For visual reference of knee working during the half-knee band imagine the production of slipper brakes at top speed. Knees do the same.
I think you have already understood that it is much safer to make deep crouch stands without causing of overworking of knee joints. It will keep you out of injuries and extend the term of their normal functioning.
This article also can include such putty of joints that legs or hands become blue – blood doesn’t drive to limbs. Idiots, there is nothing to say more. Blood doesn’t drive in – the anointing become worse – the result is known.
Another ”technique” error is the full extension of knees in the upper point of the locus. It is subject not only to the crouch stand, but also to deadlift and even bench pressing. This technique is suitable for lifters only during the competitions for set to be counted. It is not only unsuitable but also dangerous for builders.
Straitening the knees you shift the colossal exertions from the muscle to the joint, the result is the coming injury, but also you remove your progress in building-up physique.
The fifth reason: Too high exertions.
As a matter of fact it can be referred to the second reason but we have decided to mark it as a separate one, though in some cases it relates to the fourth reason.
The idea of this very reason lies in the fact that you take excess weights, with which you can not make necessary quantity of repetitions. In that case you start not to make full couches. Those attentively reading the previous reasons will get to the bottom.
The sixth reason: the neglect of stretching or its incorrect performance.
This reason is multifaceted as polished diamond. Without stretching your muscles become thicker and shorten. And it leads to the painful feelings and in the most disgusting cases – to the breaking of a muscle from a bone.
You must stretch not only in days of trainings but also in days-off. The only thing is that you must stretch in training days only after full ending of power exercises. By no means stretch out before or during the training. Actually this topic is more or less covered in our article ”Stretching: influence for power trainings”.
These are the main reasons of knee injuries. Maybe someone knew all of them and I did not reinvent a wheel. But for others it can be useful to discover them and follow the advice in order not to get a trauma.
Success attends you in a gym and ideal body becomes yours!
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