Joint pain is one of the biggest struggles that people face today. This joint pain keeps people from being active and doing the things they love to do. It makes things like going up and down stairs a miserable experience. Throughout my 10+ years of experience, I’ve been able to help people to overcome and even completely fix joint pain. Let’s talk about the 3 steps to fix knee hip and lower back pain.
1. Massage
There are various forms of massage that work to relieve excess tension from muscle which in turn relieves joint pain. Check out some of the methods of massage below.
- Professional Massage
This can be, deep tissue massage, hot stone massage, shiatsu, reflexology, etc. These are the most effect for fixing issues, but not very cost effective.
- Self Myofascial Release
This is basically a technical way of saying self massage. This can be done with a foam roll, trigger point ball, or even your own hands. Its not as in depth and effective as professional massage, but needless to say its a lot more cost effective and very convenient.
*My recommendation is to apply self myofascial release daily before and after training and professional massage once a week.
Checkout my video on foam rolling.
2. Stretching
From my experience, joint pain is usually a case of poor mobility. An example of this would be tight hamstrings and calves limiting glute activation, which causes excess stress on the quadriceps that leads to knee pain.
My recommendation is to loosen up the muscle with self myofascial release before stretching. Checkout some of the stretching methods I’d recommend.
- Active Isolated Stretching (AIS)
This stretch technique is held for only a few seconds at a time. Its performed for several repetitions, each time exceeding the previous point of resistance by a few degrees. Ideally this is performed for several sets with a specific number of repetitions.
- Dynamic Stretching
This type of stretch is a series of continuous movement patterns that resemble fluid human movement. I personally tend to model my dynamic stretching drills after various yoga poses and martial arts techniques.
3, Strengthen
Weak or inactive muscles typically cause other muscles to work way more than they normally would, thus causing muscular imbalance. These muscular imbalances ultimately cause joint pain. In order to fix these imbalances you have to strengthen those lagging muscles.
After you’ve applied self myofascial release, AIS and dynamic stretching techniques, you can start strengthening lagging muscles. There are two main ways to do this.
- Isolation Exercises
These types of exercises only require one or two joints action and the use of one or two muscles. This allows you to better focus on activating a lagging muscle. Examples of this would be a hip bridge, hamstring curl, standing calve raise, etc.
- Compound Exercises
These types of exercises are compound movements that involve the flexion and extension of at least 3 joints. Compound exercises are great for maximizing strengthen and body mechanics through improving muscle synergy. In other words this is the best way to train to be strong and balanced.
Knee, hip, and lower back pain should all be fixed at the same time because they are all directly connected. Unhealthy knees ultimately lead to hip and lower back pain and vice versa.
Here are the main things to improve to fix joint pain.
- Ankle mobility
- Hip mobility
- Spinal extension
- Torso strength
- Glute strength
- Hamstring strength
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