Knee injury is one of the most common injury that happens in sports. In this post I will show you 3 warm up drills that you should know to reduce the rate of injury. If you’re someone who plays sports that requires frequent jumping, running and change of direction, you would benefit from reading this blog.
Jumping & Landing:
First, I will show you what you shouldn’t be doing when you jump and land. In this picture, you can see that I land with my knees and body quite straight. This will increase forces onto the knee joint.
In the second picture, I am landing with my hips and knees angled inward. This will put a lot of strain onto the hips and knees. It is also one of the mechanism for ACL rupture.
When you jump and land, you want to lower your centre of gravity and push your knees outward. We often called this the “athletic stance”.
Poor landing postures can increase unwanted forces onto the knee. Some of the most common knee injuries that happen from poor landing is ACL rupture or meniscus tear.
Here are a few ways you can practice jumping and landing:
– From landing on onto 2 legs now become one instead.
– You can also add a step to increase the difficulty.
Changing Direction:
This is a picture showing you how not to change direction. You can see when I wanted to change direction I planted my foot away from my body causing a lot of twisting angle at the hip and knee.
This is the right way to change direction, low centre of gravity, not over striding, and quick small steps.
Sprinting and Deceleration:
In this picture, I am over striding and my body is too upright when decelerating from a sprint.
When decelerating you should be lowering your centre of gravity and make quick small steps.
Click on the link below to watch the movements in action.