The Guardian always has excellent practical articles on topics like fitness. In this most recent article they cover some common fitness myths and debunk them. The one that wrung most true with me was on running and my knees. I tend to back off of running completely when I experience any knee pain, and I fall back into biking. Now I think I'm going to try and run every single day if only for a half mile or so. Obviously longer on other days. But just to strengthen that area.
It doesn't make sense to me that the body should react different for the knees as opposed to everywhere else in terms of conditioning, and that is what this article points out. Actually on my most recent run I felt pain not in the knee joint itself but in the interior portion of the quadricep. Which is consistent with an incomplete biking form where I over-emphasize the downstroke of the pedal. It's also consistent with using the elliptical trainer which only responds to the downstroke and provides no ability to use the muscle on the upstroke. Ideally the elliptical should have straps so that you could bind your feet to the pads and us your muscles for both the downstroke and the upstroke.
Posted by jherr at June 5, 2007 10:28 AMThanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
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