Last Monday, I posted the first part of this great interview with Rick Kaselj, Injury Recovery Expert. Just to refresh your memory, Rick Kaselj is a personal trainer in Vancouver, Canada that specializes in designing exercise programs for clients recovering from injuries. Rick has trained thousands of clients and completed his Master’s of Science degree focusing on injury recovery.

This newsletter will focus more on recovery from knee injuries. So here is part 2 of our interview.

AK – I have a client that needs to lose a lot of weight. Her knees are basically bone on bone and the doctor has said one alternative is some surgery to help relieve the issue. She does not want to go that route and was wondering if possibly strengthening the muscles around the knee would help her constant discomfort?

RK – This is an example of the viscous cycle of knee pain. People have knee pain, this leads to less movement. Since they do less movement, they end up gaining more weight. As they gain weight, there is more stress on the knees when they stand or walk. A big thing we need to do is break the cycle.

There are a number of options that can be done.

The first is, get into the pool. The pool decreases the stress on the knees and makes it a lot easier to move. This would be the first thing that I would recommend.

The best option is to go to the pool but if you are not able to go to the pool, you can do knee strengthening at home.

Two ways of doing this is a seated leg extension where you sit and then straighten your legs one leg at time. You can alternate with a hold at the top of the movement for one second. You can increase the length of time you hold them at the top to five seconds to make it more challenging.

AK – Achy knees are one of those areas that people feel come with age. Do you feel that is the case or is it our particular lifestyle that causes those knee issues?

RK – Many times it relates to poor tracking of the knees when moving and exercising.

Many times when clients are moving around at home or at work, their knees will collapse in, instead of moving over their toes. With the knees collapsing in, it puts greater stress on the structures of the knee.

Clients need to work on keeping their knee over their toes when getting up from sitting to standing. This can be done by re-training how your body moves and by strengthening the muscles on the outer part of your hip.

AK – If it is the lifestyle, what are some of the causes for some of those chronic knee aches besides the sudden traumatic injury (i.e. torn acl)?

RK – Other lifestyle things that can lead to achy knees are:

– flat feet

– standing with your feet wide apart

– doing a lot of kneeling on hard surfaces

– wearing worn out shoes

AK – You may hear some doctors talk about avoiding squats or lunges because it is bad on the knees. What is your opinion on that topic?

RK – Squats and lunge are very important to do.

Many times it is the clients technique or muscle imbalances they have in the lower body.

AK – Torn ACL’s, MCL’s, etc have become really popular in the last 10-15 years (unfortunately). Even though technology and medical advancements makes the repairing of these injuries better than ever. Why are these injuries happening? What should athletes be doing differently to reduce the chances of these injuries ever occurring?

RK – There are two things. They need to work on hip strength and stability in the frontal plane (side-to-side) movements. The second thing is to work on their landing when jumping.

An athlete can improve their hip strength and stability with a focus on single leg exercises and working on keeping the pelvis square and not letting it drop.

The second thing is an athlete needs to take some time to make sure they are landing properly in their sport. Landing with too straight of a leg, increases the risk of an ACL and MCL injury.

AK – Can your program help all types of knee or rotator cuff injuries or are there certain types that your program is really suited to specialize in treating?

RK – Knee Injury Solution is strongly focused on ACL and ligament injuries of the knee. In the program, there are four workouts. One improves range of motion of the knee, one focuses on improving walking, one focuses on strengthening the knees and the last focuses on a warm-up routine you can do to prevent knee injuries. You can click here to go to www.KneeInjurySolution.com.

Effective Rotator Cuff Exercises is designed to help recover from a rotator cuff injury. It has a 12 week exercise program that you can follow in order to strengthen your rotator cuff and overcome your rotator cuff injury. Click here to read about the Effective Rotator Cuff Exercise Program.

I want to thank Rick for participating in this interview. I think he gave us a lot of great stuff to utilize. Take a look at his programs and get yourself properly recovered from injury.