Do you STILL not know this about the Muscle Anatomy of the Knee?
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Hey, what’s happening coaches, athletes, Michael Hughes here, co founder of Gymnazo Edu, and super pumped to talk about the knee joint, and all that goes with it. Now this is commonly known as a problematic joint that really just bends forward and backwards. And it has a little flexion extension to it. But it’s really much more capable than what we give it credit for. But it still has this follow along kind of mentality. It really takes direct orders from the ankle, foot and from the hip. And though I’d love to do a one hour long video on this topic, trust me, I would, I’m just going to do an initial deep dive on the anatomy of the knee, you know how they all come together, all these muscles on the same side, you know, how they control 3d movement, dive into that the biomechanics of it all. And then some common dysfunctions that are associated with the knee, that as a coach, or as an athlete, you’ve probably seen or experienced yourself.
Now, clients of mine, people I’ve heard, they really say, gosh, you know, My knee hurts here, here, hurts here. And while that’s helpful to get that information as a coach, or to give it from as an athlete to someone who can help you out, it’s really not that important. Many of us want to put a name to a dysfunctional, I have a meniscus tear, and that’s why my knee hurts, or well, I blew my ACL ACL out 20 years ago, and that’s why my knee hurts. And that’s really not why the knee hurts. It’s the results of pain. But it’s not why it hurts, you’re talking about the symptom versus where the problem came from. So I hope you understand a little bit more where problems come from just after this video, especially at the very end when I dive into those common dysfunctions. And if it’s already peaking your assist in interest, if you’re already liking what I’m having to say, please hit the like button. Consider subscribing to the channel, for we love to break down the human body and how its application to training and conditioning. And really how to use for the trainer and for the athlete alike. If you also want to dive in really, really serious, and get to understanding how the knee works with the rest of the body. And please check out our multi dimensional movement coaching mentorship, check out the link in the description below. Because this is a deep dive course it’s not just a really a course it’s actually a mentorship, it’s a it’s a partnership. It’s about transform, transforming how you think, and apply the body as a coach, as an athlete, and what it means to your business and your practice. Not only is there over 140 Something videos and growing as we learn more we apply more to it. It’s a deep dive of applying how we train and condition and make it fit into your business and practice. And we especially have a lot of coaching calls that are built into the course that amount make this not just information, but in a transformational process. And so many of our of our coaches going through, they’ve changed so much of their lives. So if you really liked this content, and like what we’re talking about, check it out. The MDMC program is a game changer. And it’s a big, big deal that we want you to benefit from. Right, let’s break down the anatomy of the knee. Let’s start with the joints. What kind of joint is it? Well, it’s a hinge joint, it really likes to flex and likes to extend. This is the motion that it’s primarily known for. But the lateral motion of the knee joint and the rotational capacity of the knee joint ulcers be understood. Because we cannot forget about those other two planes emotions, especially the frontal plane, it has a lot more motion than a transverse plane, but it can only really get it when the foots connected to the ground. So if my foots back to the ground, I can get that stickiness of my foot, as I drive my pelvis to the inside, I get that knee going through a B duction, or abduction, or essentially that valgus scene of the knee and the knees designed to do that extremely well, extremely well, just not too much, without the proper training on how to slow it down from going in there. And the proper training on how to bring it back home before something bad happens. And of course, it’s the same thing happens on the other way, not as much. So we don’t have as much we would call same side lateral motion. As you do we have opposite side lateral motion of that knee. But we have to understand that it should be trained in that spectrum of health and produce as much range of motion as we can effectively, efficiently. So when we do go to those patterns, and we don’t expect it, we know what to do about it. And that’s the same thing about the rotational aspect of the knee. If the ankle foot and the hips rotate extremely well, that knee can rotate extremely well, but it’s an instinct rotation for the tibia and fibia and the femur, they move together in space, the knee has a little bit of capacity, a few degrees of rotation to rotate out of sync. That means that Tim and Feb goes one way and that femur goes the opposite way. It can only do it a little bit, but we still have to be mindful of that if we don’t train this hip and that Foot Ankle, then that knee is going I have a big problem, the knee likes to assist in motion. That’s how I like to look at it, though that basketball player that just loves to pass it off and have the other joint score the point. In fact, it’s really, really good at that. So we have to have the understanding when we’re thinking about training, and helping the knee joint perform its best tasks. So again, it’s an assister more than anything else. Now, the major muscles of the knee joint, well, let’s look at it, we have the calf complex, we’ll talk about primarily the soleus and the gastroc. We have the quads right up on top, we’re going to have the hamstrings in back, we have the adductors on the inside. And then we have the posterior hip complex, we’re talking about the different glutes, the TFL, the IT band, those connective tissues on the back side and the lateral side. Now, those are big, big muscles that are certainly a lot more muscles that influence the knee on the upper side of the pelvis. But again, this is just an initial deep dive to get your kind of your your palate going a little bit, you know, how do these muscles affect and move the knee? Well, we’re going to talk about it. How gravity tells us it does it first, not how the textbook tells us because a textbook was was written more than likely with a cadaver a dead person on the table. And they said, Well, what is this muscle do? Well, that’s this muscle for this muscle and it moved the knee joint this way. That’s not what gravity says. Gravity says a different story. I’m gonna dive into that pretty pretty heavily. Because it’s about deceleration first or E centric loading first, then acceleration. And this is a really a mindset shift. You know, I was taught heavily, in my case geology background about what the knee does on the muscles around it. And from an acceleration standpoint, but not very well from how it goes to the deceleration pattern. First, the biomechanics that are associated with that. It’s the same concept if I want to shoot an arrow, right? Bone arrow archery, I want to shoot an arrow, what do I have to do first? Well, first, I got to pull it up, right. But I have to pull the bow back, I have to make a basically a backwards motion to create a forwards energy. Okay? Same can be said with this one stand up for me, if you’re sitting down, try this out, literally, I want you to try to jump without putting any sort of downward motion first. That means you cannot dorsi flex the knee or sue the the ankle you cannot flex the knee you cannot flex the hip you cannot flex it, the thoracic spine at all. And it’s the thing is that you it can’t happen. We have to create e centric before we produce the we have to produce essential excuse me as before we produce the concentric. And that’s super important as we dive into this context. Hey, what about mobility stability, what is the knee joint like to have what likes to be more stable than mobile, it likes to have the sagittal plane, be rare, very dominant, have a little bit of frontal plane and even a little bit less of the transverse plane. And the problems arrive in the D joint when these hips and this ankle foot which loves to be more mobile than stable, when they lose their mobility become too stable, lose their mobility become too stable. And then this balance of mobility and stability gets off kilter. And the knee has to become more mobile. To get the job done of this leg then has to become an actor versus a reactor has to become the driver the point score versus the assist. And that’s where problems start to arise. We’ll talk about a lot more that in later in this video. So it’s really important, really important that concept that I just said, What about the muscles, let’s go to the calf complex. Let’s talk about the soleus and the gastroc. The soleus to me understand this one about the anatomy of the knee. The soleus is the brake pedal of the knee. It really is that muscle that lives underneath this showy flashy muscle. It’s a big muscle dome. It’s a big big muscle. And it’s really shows itself off from the inside. Because as the soleus, it crosses through the ankle joint and attaches right above or excuse me, in a sense, above the lower leg below the knee. When it does its job very well it decelerates the tibia and fibia from going too far forward. That’s a big big deal. Big job, especially going down hills. We’ll talk about that later in the video. And the gastroc is really the accelerator because it crosses not only the the ankle joint back here, but also the knee joint. It really likes to do its job when the knee is much more straight in a sense. Solis likes to do his job more when the knees bent. gastroc likes to do the job more when the knees straight forwards under greater tension. But we cannot forget about the gastroc and it has a bifurcation it splits has two heads and it’s it goes from either side into the femur so it also has rotate additional capacity and lateral capacity because of that split. So when trained training your calf, it’s not just about doing the vertical, it’s changing the angle of that lift to affect that knee and a much greater capacity. So just write that down, make sure you’re doing that, especially for the gastroc. What about these four muscles up here,
the quads, ready for it, the quads do not extend the knee. First, I’m gonna talk about gravity. Right? They are responsible for decelerating knee flexion as we go through our gait pattern as we go through our basic walking patterns in life. So we have to train them that way. And understand that if they can’t do that job first, how do they affect the joint. So it’s really interesting when we start to think about all the machines, all the training conditioning that’s been built, that extend the knee and work those quads. And I would say, if that’s not what the quads do, first in function, I can go into much deeper, we’ll leave it just at that. And the hamstrings is kind of a similar story, the hamstrings do not flex the knee. First in function. Their primary first job is to decelerate knee flexion. As we’re going through walking and running and climbing. It’s kind of crazy, because once the hamstrings have decelerated knee flexion, and they go into a contract towel state, they actually extend the knee. Hmm, I’d love to see some comments on that one on where your mind goes when I say that, because that’s what function is with the hamstrings at the knee joint. But they also have this bifurcation, they split and they wrap around here and they wrap around there. And they have great control of their full frontal plane and transverse plane. So if you’re not training those hamstrings, to cut and change directions through decelerating of knee flexion and causing knee extension, then we’re missing out and we’re going to damage or hurt the knee in the long term. If we don’t have that focus on to it. What about the inside here? What about those abductors? Well they do not add ducked the knee joint in function, they decelerate A B duction. They decelerate the knee going away from the body. So doesn’t go to too far as we move and locomote through our daily daily tasks. So it’s important that we train them to go through the deceleration of AB duction as they do everything, because these ads he’s had doctors are crazy, complicated muscles, they act like hamstrings, but they have the ability to rotate and externally internally rotate, they have the ability to actually help with flexion of the of the hip joint. They’re all over the place. don’t train them primarily to, to add that the knee joint in open chain you’re going to miss out in you’re going to cause some knee problems later in the future. Because they really need to be very flexible and very, very adaptable to the function of your body in upright stance. Okay, now this big posterior hip right back here, that nice posterior and lateral hip. These guys are really responsible to decelerate to decelerate, hip flexion decelerate hip a deduction to decelerate hip or femur, internal rotation. That’s what they’re designed to do that they’re designed to decelerate those things first, and then flip those things on their head, and boom, accelerate the opposite of them. But if you don’t get that good deceleration, that good loading first, then that knee joint is going to be left out to dry. It’s like, gosh, where are you? Where are you hip, we’re already in this capacity for me to absorb gravity ground reaction forces momentum first. And that’s where the knee gets busted up a lot as we can’t, it gets too wild, it gets too crazy. So if this post your hip complex can’t decelerate, decelerate, decelerate, then the knee is going to go into a crazy amount of that motion that we all are super afraid of called knee valgus. Who’s responsible for that? Isn’t the need responsible for that? No, remember, it’s an assister? It’s an assister of these two major, massive joints. So it’s kind of keep that focused in as we dive deeper into the common dysfunctions. And I was kind of just alluded to it right here. Yeah, that kind of that we call it the the kind of the terrible triad. That’s when the ACL tears, that’s when the MCL tears, that’s when the meniscus medial meniscus tears is as well and are showing that off a little bit because that’s a very common motion. Now, as I’m talking about common knee dysfunctions, I’m talking about non impact stuff. Obviously, I can be tackled from the outside, boom. I literally have a shoulder pad coming right into my knee. That is certainly a way that you can destroy the knee and I don’t care how well trained you are through the functional way of decelerating the motion sometimes As physics just out just just wins Long story short, but we’re gonna talk about how you can train it from a non contact injury, which is the most common way that people hurt their knees, no one touches them. It’s just just a foot on the ground. That’s about it and a body going through motion. So I gotta give a lot of credit to the gray Institute for teaching me the OH S tz the oshit transformational zones as they say it. And what that basically means is that you’re putting the knee into an environment, that it has to respond very well to an environment that you would say to yourself, oh, shit, like, oh, man, what’s going to happen, I better do something right now or something bad is going to happen. And if we don’t train it and condition it progressively through that pattern, then we’re going to be in a bad shape. Because when you tear something, you over expand it, you take it beyond its elastic threshold, where it cannot rebound, it cannot slow it down and say I gotcha, bring me back into into a contractile state and bring it back into a good pattern. And that’s where problems happen. That’s where the knee can’t decelerate. This motion. It can’t decelerate too much extension, and it can’t decelerate the internal rotation factors that have it. Well, what muscles would be able to do that, how do you train that to happen? Well, you better not train the knee to do that. Because the knee says I’m just following along with this foot does, we better be able to train to decelerate pronation of that foot, we better be able to be able to decelerate the dorsiflexion, we better be able to do to decelerate hip extension, hip AB duction and hip, essentially, it’s going through a turn, it’s kind of you said it’s kind of external rotation, but it’s the internal rotation of the knee. And if we can’t understand that, then we’re gonna put our knee into a very dangerous scenario where it says, I don’t know what’s going to happen, I hope you only run straight. I hope you only land with your knee over your toe, I hope you only do stuff that is primarily in the sagittal plane, because then you’ll be just fine. But that’s doesn’t happen. That’s not life. That’s not sport. So when these ACL MCL, and meniscus tears happen, it’s really due to the lack of capacity here, lack of capacity here from a general understanding. So it’s a big, big deal. And I want you to understand that you have to put your knee into a position where the other muscle groups have to start to decelerate those fearful movements to bring it back home under control. So member, ankle, foot hip, that’s where the knee gets in trouble when these two guys primarily don’t do their job. Well with this thing called runner’s knee. Well, I’m running, running running. How does that that patella pain right on top of fact, well, you got to go back a little bit, what’s the job of the knee on the lower half? Well, the job of the lower near the lower half is to decelerate flexion, what’s the job of the knee on the upper half what’s to decelerate hip flexion as as well as ankle dorsiflexion, hip flexion, what muscles really do that job very well. Again, from a general standpoint, the soleus and the quads, if they have too much tension, and they can’t put on the brake pedal appropriately, they’re going to shift that relationship between the lower bones and the upper bones and that knee and that patella is going to get some extra stress on it. And that’s going to cause some problems, especially on longer, longer runs. There’s also some upper body stuff going on there, too. I don’t want to discount that. But that’s for a deeper, deeper dive. So check out those muscles, make sure they feel good, elastic and flexible. What about just general knee pain walking up and down hills? Well, I like to think that if I’m going downhill, I have to put more of a brake pedal mindset on and we just talked about that, right? We just talked about what are the big brake pedals of this? What are the primary ones we focus on? soleus, quad posterior hip, right? Those are the guys that really slow down that pattern. And if they don’t have the functionality of the health, the elasticity, then there’d be some issues. What about walking uphill, walking upstairs? Well, the big powerhouses of walking up, right are going to be the hamstrings adductors right course the posterior hip too. But if they don’t have the ability to go through that E centric loading to produce enough force to pay produce a concentric contraction, then they’re going to move that knee joint out of whack. They can they can produce
an aberrant kind of force at this femur on that knee joint, that’s going to cause it some shifting, and that’s gonna cause some discomfort because then he doesn’t like to be too mobile doesn’t like to move too much. Nice to be nice, stacked and in a good alignment. So, things to consider. The body is very complicated. There’s no question and it’s its ability to control movement is immense. But there are physical there are biological and there are behavioral factors that play into every single movement that we perform. How do you simplify it? Well, how do you understand or reverse engineer, certain improver athletes and perhaps your own life? Well, we have to understand the truth and the principles and to really perform how the muscles really move the joint how the joints really move under physics, and how it effects the situations that we’re in. And then once we understand that in all scenarios, then we can solve for individual problems that come up, versus only learning how to solve one problem. And once we understand and understand that one problem, we kind of hope only that one problem gets presented to us as a practitioner or movement professional. In our multi dimensional movement, coaching program, or mentorship, we just teach you not what to think. But how to think and hope this video gives you an understanding of how to think about the body a little differently than they bought the books tell you. I love talking about these topics. And if you’ve listened this video at this point, I imagine you do as well. So please remember to LIKE subscribe, post a comment on what you think we should talk about next, because we’d like to dive into what our listeners love. And if you’re a trainer and found this helpful, don’t forget to check out our MCMC mentorship program in the links below. If you want to apply for that program. We’d love to chat with you and see how this can blow up your training and conditioning and make you have all the processes to make you just an outstanding, helpful individual to all those movers out there. Again, my name is Michael Hughes. I’ll see you guys next time.
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