The Importance of Core Strengthening When You Have a Knee Injury:

Ever wonder why you come in to physio to get your knee looked at and Mark has you exercising other body parts? Specifically, that he has you start working trunk/core muscles? The simple answer is that a weak core can lead to instability in the hip which put extra strain on the knee. The more detailed answer is that when we get weak core muscles, especially weak abdominal muscles leads to the use of other muscles to get the job done, in this case hip muscles begin to be used improperly to achieve movement or tasks (balance and body stabilization) which then puts added strain on the knee as it too now needs to accommodate for the actions that are normally done by the hip muscles. A study done by Ferber et al. (2015) actually showed that core and hip exercises done along side a traditional knee rehab program saw improvements in their knee pain faster than a knee rehab program alone. The body is a wonderous thing where so many parts are so intricately connected that we can't ignore certain parts of the body just because they aren't painfulJournal Article if you are interested in the study done: Ferber, Reed et al. "Strengthening of the hip and core versus knee muscles for the treatment of patellofemoral pain: a multicenter randomized controlled trial." Journal of athletic training vol. 50,4 (2015): 366-77. doi:10.4085/1062-6050-49.3.70