Can’t fire a canon from a canoe

Strength is the mother of all qualities.

Most of injured knees and backs have two things in common, a strength discrepancy, a weakness in the chain. When you train for sports, training like a bodybuilder has some benefits, but if it’s all you do, you miss the big picture. The body moves as a whole.

The knee needs a structural balance. It starts from the foot and ankle, all the little intricate muscles are there to signal the nervous system what and how to fire up the posterior chain, the hips, the core.

As in a chain of command, the generals give all the special forces soldiers their given task to be ready for war, but what if one of the teams can’t do his tasks? A big mess somewhere or, someone has to do the job for them.

When the foot and the eyes initiate’s a reaction to an action from the opponents, the body fires up. May this be in hockey, judo, jiujitsu or boxing, once the throw is initiated, the eyes command the feet, the core and the legs to do what they need to do.

In different sports, take figure skating for example. The landing after a triple axel puts 3 to 5 times the weight of the body on the landing leg.

In football, running, sprinting and charging are the most important aspects of the sport. The bigger problem is the danger of external forces applied on the lower body where some of the impacts can have career endings consequences.

Generally, you’ll see weak VMO’s (inner part of the knee) where you see the knee buckle in when performing a squat for example. It could also come from a weak gluteus medius. But it doesn’t stop there, we also, often see a strength discrepancy in the hamstring, the antagonist muscle of the quad, if your hamstring doesn’t fire up when needed, bye bye knees!

So gaining strength is a no brainer. Strong and healthy knees will save you from being taken out from your favorite sports indefinitely.

Coach Eric