How To Not Lock Your Knees When Standing

"Don't lock your knees!" This is a cue many of us hear consistently!

On the other paw, if you lot've ever practiced Bikram yoga, and so you were told to ever "lock your knees".

Peradventure you were told to "Always keep a small bend in your human knee."

What now? Make upwards your mind already!

Should you exist locking your knees, or always proceed a bend in your knees? Well, neither of these cues is correct. Here's the truth:

When Continuing, Your Knees Should Be Straight, Not Locked

You most likely fall into one of the post-obit categories:

1. Hypermobile

The muscles, tendons, and ligaments effectually the human knee are supposed to stabilize the joint. Being hypermobile (read loosy-goosy joints), your ligaments are genetically long and lax, which ways they're not doing a great task stabilizing my joints. You lot can probably touch the floor with your hands pretty easily when bending forward in a continuing position.

The simply selection for a weak knee to suffer long periods of standing, is to lock, which puts it into a pseudo-stabile position where the two bones that course the knee joint press confronting each other and lean lazily against the ligaments. Afterwards doing this for hours, your knee joint might complain in the course of discomfort or hurting. You might describe information technology every bit "my knees are tired".

In order for our legs to provide a stable foundation for any upper trunk or torso motion, we need to proceed our legs actively engaged. Locking your knees will turn off the muscles around the articulation and can evencause you to faint due to reduced blood flow back to the center.

2. Very athletic who neglects stretching

On the flipside, in (endurance) athletes such as cyclists, or runners, or anyone who'southward sitting virtually of their waking hours, the muscles on the backside of your legs (hamstrings and calves) might accept become shortened. This pulls your thigh and lower leg bones towards each other, which bends the knee. If those muscles are not consistently lengthened, and so your knees volition lose their power to fully extend (straighten). The body very efficiently gets rid of what information technology doesn't demand. How'south that for a twist on "Use Information technology or Lose it"?!

How To Find The Right - Actively Engaged and Straight - Position For Your Human knee

I'm almost to evidence yous an extremely like shooting fish in a barrel and quick gear up for your knees. But remember, what'southward easy to do is also easy not to exercise . And because I know tons of smart sayings, here is another ane: "Wisdom is non doing, wisdom is remembering."

Step 1: Lock Your Knees

Push your knees all the way back equally far equally they go. This might feel common to yous - if your knees like to hyperextend, like mine) - or this might feel extremely uncomfortable to y'all if your usual pattern is to keep your knees always bent. Stand sideways to a mirror. Can you run across that the leg has a slight astern curve to it?

Step 2: Curve Your Knees

Now practice the opposite: curve your knees. Only just a little fleck, just enough that you feel that they are bent. Notice that it feels like the leg has a forrad curve. Which it does, of course. It just seems a lot more than obvious in this position.

Stride iii: Straighten Your Knees

Now nosotros'll find a position that'southward somewhere between the two previous ones, where it feels neither bent backward nor forward. At present your human knee is straight, just not locked. Information technology might not feel stable (yet), just direct.

Here is one more cue to help you straighten your knee out of the locked position:

Resume the (incorrect) locked position again, and and then think of pushing the calf muscle confronting the shin os. Or imagine someone is pushing against your dogie from behind you with a lot of ability and you are fighting them by stabilizing your lower leg (you don't allow them to push button you around). Immediately, you should experience the muscles of the whole lower leg engage.

What'due south Habitual Feels Correct, Even If Information technology's Not

Retrieve that right alignment does not always experience right at first. Nosotros perceive every bit right what we are used to, what'southward familiar. In the commencement, you volition need to remind yourself oftentimes to unlock your knees, until it has become 2nd nature.

Depending on which extreme you're coming from (locked or aptitude), your knees might feel style as well bent or totally hyperextended, fifty-fifty in the correct actively straightened position.

A swell Pilates exercise to aid yous repeatedly find the correct actively straight position, until it'due south in your musculus memory, is Footwork on the Reformer. Each time you push the carriage out yous accept to find the position, where your knees are direct, not locked, and not aptitude.

Here's a verbal cue I apply all the time for this:

"Imagine your legs are safe bands. As you button the carriage out, you pull the rubber bands long. At that place is no endpoint or stopping point, y'all just continue pulling until yous determine to modify direction and allow the condom bands to slowly shorten."

This cue keeps the muscles in your legs engaged without ever turning them off and locking them. But it emphasizes length and stretching at the same time.

Likewise thinking of the actively straight position (which trains your heed and motor control), I highly recommend yous practice specific exercises that lengthening or strengthening (respectively) the tissue itself.

Exercises That Correct Hyperextended Knees

If reminding yourself over and over doesn't fix your hyperextended knees, you should recollect about practicing exercises that strengthen your hamstrings, such as

• Single Leg Kicks,
• Double Leg Kicks,
• Dorsum Command and Leg Pull,
• Bridging with your feet on a cream roller or stability ball,
• Bridging on the Reformer,
• Hamstring Curls on the Reformer
• Hamstring Curls with Magic Circle
• Hamstring Curls with Ankle Weights

Exercises That Correct Bent Knees

If you accept a difficult fourth dimension totally straightening your knees, then you'll need to spend (much) more than fourth dimension lengthening your hamstrings, with exercises such equally:

• 3-Way Stretch on the Reformer,
• iii-Fashion Stretch with a yoga belt, or magic circle
• Ballet Stretch: Hamstrings on the Ladder Butt
• Standing Hip Stretch on the Reformer
• Unmarried Leg Footwork on the Trapeze Tabular array/Belfry (Cadillac)

If y'all are looking for more than ideas of how to continue your knees unlocked, I invite you to join the Pilates Encyclopedia membership. You'll discover manufactures regarding knee hurting, hyperextended knees, bow legs, knock knees, and much more.

Source: https://www.pilatesencyclopedia.com/blog/should-you-be-locking-your-knees

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