Excessive Knee Extension: Importance in Fitness
It's not necessarily strong to feel joint hyperextension in daily life, but in fitness, joint hyperextension is a problem that must be avoided. In fact, most people have joint hyperextension, but you may not be aware of it.
In low-weight training, joint hyperextension may not cause much problem, but it is not recommended. If it's in heavy weight training, if you have joint hyperextension, it's irreversible for your joint damage. Recently, there was a dynamic picture: a young man performed leg presses with heavy weights and stubbornly pushed, causing a fitness accident, the joint was pressed and deformed.
For the problem of joint hyperextension, knee joint hyperextension is a problem that fitness enthusiasts should pay special attention to, because the knee joint is the most common one. Today, let's chat about knee joint hyperextension, why do you have knee joint hyperextension?
This article is divided into three parts:
What is knee joint hyperextension?
The harm of joint hyperextension!
The reasons why you have knee joint hyperextension, and how to change this problem!
1. What is knee joint hyperextension?
Knee joint hyperextension, also known as knee overextension, can be seen in the picture below:
When your knee joint is fully extended, the state of your joint should be that the ankle, knee, and hip joints are on the same line. However, at this time, your knee joint extends too far beyond this line, which is knee joint hyperextension.
The term 'joint neutrality' we often say also means that your joints should be on the same line!
2. Harm of joint hyperextension
Simply put, it will put extra pressure on your joints, causing uneven joint loading, you single joint bears too much load, is squeezed, not multiple joints together bear the load.
This not only damages the joint and causes knee pain, but also affects your posture, such as X-shaped legs and O-shaped legs, most of which are caused by knee joint hyperextension.
It also causes imbalance in your muscles, such as the gastrocnemius and soleus muscles are in line.
When the gastrocnemius muscle is tense, it leads to functional flatfoot and when the soleus muscle is tense, it leads to lower back pain.
3. The reasons and ways to change knee joint hyperextension
·Muscle imbalance
It is known that the muscles around the knee joint are mainly the quadriceps, gastrocnemius, and soleus muscles.Among them, the quadriceps are responsible for extending the knee joint; the gastrocnemius and soleus muscles are responsible for flexing the knee joint. If one side of the muscles is too strong and the other side is too weak, it will cause joint hyperextension, which will lead to postural problems, just like chest and back, if you only train your chest and not your back, you will have rounded shoulders and hunchback.
The stability of the knee joint relies on the quadriceps and gastrocnemius muscles, these two muscles are antagonistic, one extends the knee joint, the other flexes the knee joint. They inhibit each other. When your knee joint extends, the quadriceps muscle contracts, especially when the knee extends to the last 20 degrees, while the gastrocnemius and soleus muscles work to control the concentric movement to stabilize the joint and prevent knee joint hyperextension.So, for leg muscles, you may pay more attention to the quadriceps, but you often ignore the gastrocnemius and soleus muscles, this is a mistake, it's important to pay attention to the posterior chain muscles, which will effectively improve knee joint hyperextension. To train the gastrocnemius and soleus muscles, there are representative exercises such as calf raises and seated calf raises!
Gastrocnemius
Seated Calf Raises
·Quadriceps muscle tension
As we mentioned earlier, the quadriceps muscle is responsible for extending the knee joint. If it is too tense, knee hyperextension will occur.
Why does the quadriceps muscle become tense?
Often, it's because the quadriceps muscle is weak. When your body is walking, the center of gravity is in between your legs, and it is constantly changing. At this time, the quadriceps muscle needs to generate force to complete the task. If the quadriceps muscle is weak, the body will look for another way to compensate, such as the joint capsule and ligaments to fix, and push the knee joint to hyperextend.
Therefore, it is necessary to train the quadriceps muscle, and stretching after training can effectively relieve the tension of the quadriceps muscle.
Sitting with legs extended, squats are good exercises to train the quadriceps muscle.
Squats
Quadriceps Muscle Stretch
·Soleus muscle tension
The leg muscles also have the soleus muscle. When the soleus muscle is tense and weak, it will lead to knee joint hyperextension.
When the soleus muscle is tense and weak, the tension increases, making the legs heavy during walking, limiting the movement of the tibia forward, which will be compensated by the knee joint hyperextension.
Therefore, it is also necessary to train the soleus muscle. The calf raise exercise is a good exercise to train the soleus muscle.
·Hip joint problems
This is corresponding to the soleus muscle tension.
When the soleus muscle is tense and weak, it increases the angle of hip flexion to complete the transfer of the body's center of gravity.
The excessive transfer of the body's center of gravity, the body will try to maintain balance, and the soleus muscle will generate force to pull the tibia forward, which leads to knee joint hyperextension.
The above points are all related to muscle function. Here we say more, many people now basically work desk job for long time, sitting for a long time, resulting in muscle atrophy. 'Use it or lose it' naturally leads to various problems.
Therefore, regular exercise and increasing muscle exercise ability can effectively avoid these problems. For your posture, it's a good improvement.
·Body awareness problem
Finally, there is the problem of body awareness. Some people have good muscle awareness and joint awareness in fitness training, and they can easily find the feeling of contraction in fitness training. However, some people are not good at this aspect, if you have a body awareness disorder, you cannot find the position of the joint when it disappears or diminishes, you will also have hyperextension.This can also be improved through training, and more training will help you feel the position of muscle and joint!
This article is about knee joint hyperextension. Understanding and solving knee joint hyperextension is to avoid discomfort caused by knee joint hyperextension in the future, and it's also beneficial for protecting the knee joints during fitness training!
In general, it's related to muscle function. Hope everyone pays attention to muscle strength, appropriate exercise, and let's lift iron together! Share fitness knowledge every day to help you get better physiques! Welcome to follow, thank you!
·
