Things you learn while figure skating—I applied this one to the daily walk with Jane, and it’s made an immediate difference.
Patellar tracking correction, available usually in the Ace bandage display in the pharmacy section of your mega-grocery, or in a drug store. It’s a simple band that fits around your leg just under the kneecap, pass one tab through the hole in the other and snug tight. Wearing it under your jeans or outside makes no difference.
To skate well and long on one foot, you need to have your kneecap aligned over the space between your big and second toe, your tail somewhat tucked and your shoulders back. Let that knee go off that track and you’ll start to have a problem, culminating in having to catch your balance.
How this applies to ankle, knee and hip pain, including lower back AND shoulder pain: If you walk around with your knee going out to the side (particularly women tend to do this, due to hip structure, likewise bowlegged cowboys) you are throwing your ankle to the side, your hip is having to compensate, and may turn outward, complicating things even further, and your lower back and butt are having to compensate for what the hip is doing. Result: lower back ache, even shoulders and upper shoulders, depending on how much, and on general posture.
When you tighten that little strap around your upper calf, just under the kneecap, you are compelling the knee to track correctly. This allows your hip to align correctly, keeps your ankle from compensating, and straightens your stride. If you have tended to be swaybacked in any degree, work at simultaneously tucking your tail bone under your center of balance, and walk that way. Main muscles now are pulling the way evolution designed them to pull, and you’ll develop more strength and less pain.
If you don’t have the problem, won’t work miracles for you, but I’d estimate a majority of women acquire it from a combination of broad hip structure and typical lifestyle of carrying groceries and standing, and no few men get it from carrying heavy loads. It sure shows up if you practice a balance sport like skating.
The Ace knee band is not cheap, but far from expensive.
http://www.amazon.com/ACE-207359-Knee-Strap/dp/B001ALZZ44
Thanks for the advice and the link – I have lately started to do a lot of hill walking & I think this might be useful on the downhill stretches where I struggle a bit with balance.
This sounds immensely valuable. My reveation was that chiropractors had the right theory: if a joint is even slightly misaligned, it’s much more likely to hurt. And if you’ve been walking around for months or years like that, you’re likely to need proper intervention to loosen up the surrounding muscles; but I’ve found that if I’ve just adapted an awkward posture and something – wrist, elbow, knee, whatever – hurts, stretching and twisting carefully until it clicks into place is just the ticket. Since discovering this, most aches have been temporary. (Properly aligned joints are less likely to develop arthritis, which ought to be an additional incentive for good posture.)
They’re similar to the bands used on the forearm for tennis, only in this instance, they’re stretching an elastic band across the area just under the patella (kneecap)—preventing the knee from deviating. If the knee can’t deviate, everything else has to stay in alignment. I’ve tried a lot of fixes including exercise, but this tops all.
I thought this might be the way to go because of an odd background: I’m not only a skater, I was a fencer, and during the period when I was on the fencing team and had lower leg muscles matching those they draw on comic book heroes—I had no pains, either. In European fencing, you have to drop your back arm as you squat and lunge deep with the back leg going straight and the lead kneecap right down that same track you use in figure skating; between big toe and second toe. If you aren’t in that position, you can’t recover, and in a serious fencing match, you die. If you are in position, leg muscle and the curl of your back arm upward can propel you right back where you came from, light as a feather. A really good fencer can gain extra reach by a lunge so long and deep it looks impossible to recover from—and be back up again as lightly as a ballerina. Well, that was what I could do, when I was younger and skinnier. And I’d gone into that sport with two football knees and a little pudge. It ‘fixed’ the football knees. The tendon attachments strengthened and never tore again (an annual event for the previous ten years, and still the reason I tend to use the rail on a downward stairs)—not even as I’ve gotten older. So yep, exercise can fix things, but if you’re not tracking well as you exercise, you’re not doing the bod any favors. Better 10 reps with immaculate tracking than 50 with sloppy tracking that’s actually hurting your joints. Yep. I’m with you, Wyvern.
When you overexert, take a couple Advil or Tylenol before you go to bed that night. That really helps with the sore muscles — this wisdom from a lady who cleans houses for a living. As for your attempted faceplant, RICE — Rest, Ice, Compresses and Elevation.
I can remember walking home from school and training myself to keep my feet parallel as I walked. I had some idea that that was the best way to walk. I need to practice that some more. Seems like the more weight you put on, the more “duck footed” you get, trying to balance your heft. Throws the whole shebang out of alignment.
I started from duck-footed, and trained my feet out of it when I was in high school (the training fades when I’m tired).
I think it might be part of why my knees (and hips) don’t like me: I started out misaligned (no, really, it had the doctor worried).
I found out I have a misalignment in my kneecap while I was a heavy volleyball player. It caused tendonitis in my knee.
I used ibuprofen and now get ulcers if I take it now. If you’re using it long term, you should find the problem and stop treating the symptom.
I strengthened my thigh muscles and stretched my hamstrings. That helps a lot!
What cured it were arch supports – recommended after a PT visit to see what the issue was. Since I got custom ones from the podiatrist I haven’t had a problem. They were expensive but I no longer wince in pain when I walk up stairs. I’ve tried over the counter supports and they don’t quite work.
Arch support could do it: if the foot is tipping over in the least, everything else must follow. I tell you, one of the most important things for a youngster is a posture check. The old image of the young Victorian girl carrying books on her head is a start—but just like checking out a horse, an every-few-years toe-to-head check of how a kid is standing and some corrective exercise could save that kid a lot of years of hurt…sure a kid doesn’t like to be told he’s got a problem, but if he’s counseled that that exercise is the key to a sport he values, betcha he’ll do it. To put it inelegantly, for every rabbit, somewhere there’s the right carrot.
We tried Goodfeet arch supports for a while—they were better than the Merrill hiking shoes that nearly ruined my feet. But it was hysterical when we got on the ice. You know that ‘you can’t be tipped over’ feature that brand advertises? Well, on figure skates, it means you can’t steer and you almost can’t stand up. There’s a brand Jane uses that literally looks like a pencil eraser (of varying sizes) stuck in a metatarsal support: does everything she needs and helps the skating. Ask her the brand.
I have the world’s highest arch: can’t wear ordinary tennies, because lacing them cuts off the blood supply to my feet: the Reebok Easy Tones are the first tennies, including some very pricey ones, that I’ve ever been able to wear. I can’t get into some shoes if they have any top: boots have to have a zipper to let me settle my feet down in, or laces that let me accommodate that arch.
Jane’s the opposite. Very flat feet. Before skating she couldn’t wear high heels at all: her toes literally would not respond, hence she had no balance at all in heels, and just walking across the floor in them was a challenge. But the skating, which continually works the fine muscles, and the little arch support (minuscule, really) and the Easy Tone shoes—half a dozen years of that, and she’s got toe wiggle she’d have sworn she just wasn’t born able to do, and her feet have developed a discernable bit of an arch. She can wear high heels with no trouble, and has a skater’s balance, which is pretty darned good.
So what you exit your teens with isn’t always destiny. But boy it takes work—and if you can find the right support to keep you out of pain and with the program, to keep or acquire that central body alignment I mentioned above—it’s worth its weight in gold.
Thank you very much for this recommendation. I ordered on at once for my right knee. I don’t skate, but I am working on balance issues – use arch supports from a podiatrist, also a thing to lengthen my left leg. I still have issues with knees, especially the right. I mentioned this to docs including the podiatrist, but no one suggested this device. If nothing else it should help make sure that my knee cap is correctly positioned during exercise. I am careful about knee over foot, but that exact placement is surely important. No medical or therapy person ever mentioned this to me.
If you try this, let me know how it worked for you, positive or negative. I don’t like to suggest people spend hard-earned cash if it doesn’t work. But Amazon will refund within a short time, if it doesn’t perform.
Let me suggest, too, when you take your upright, balanced stance—you do a curious exercise. With your back as straight as you can stand and looking straight ahead,—take control of your shoulderblades and pull down on them both at once and toward the spine. Hard as you can. This may relieve some aches, may pop your back a bit, and may adjust your neck when you move your head in that position. Try it while driving your car, and while walking. Be sure you have your tailbone under you when you do this. Tuck it a bit if you tend to be swaybacked. This simple shoulderblade trick is something I use when skating—silly as it sounds, on some maneuvers where back position and balance matters, I envision controlling ‘wings’ and stretching one out as I lift my arm and reach. This keeps the shoulderblades under control and properly aligned. I know it sounds weird, but try it, turning your head as you lift your arm, then going back to starting-stance, wings folded, and shoulderblades pulled down. It may make your back feel better. It’s a bit of isometrics that you can practice with your imagination, in isolation, and together, and it’s a part of the back that too few exercise programs pay attention to—a real center of stress if it never stretches out.