Hip and Knee Pain Relief with Physical Therapy!
If you’ve been dealing with hip and knee pain for a long time, you may believe it’s chronic, and won’t ever go away. But it can, in fact, and physical therapy – either physiotherapy, chiropractic care, or athletic therapy – is one of the best ways to help! With the right treatments, you can alleviate pain in your hips and knees, if not abolish it entirely.
To learn more about your treatment options, contact Leaps and Bounds Performance Rehabilitation today!
What will physical therapy do for me?
Hip and knee pain can be extremely frustrating because it appears that no matter what you do, you will experience pain. Sitting for long periods hurts. It hurts when you stand up. Walking around feels ok, but just for a bit before your pain increases.
However, there are ways to reduce your pain in the long run. It may take some time and effort on your part, but physical therapy has been shown time and again to help patients of all ages and backgrounds reduce hip and knee pain.
Why does physical therapy provide such long-lasting pain relief? There are several reasons for this, including:
- Getting to the bottom of your problem. If you only treat the symptoms of a hip and/or knee problem, the problem will almost certainly return after a few hours, or days if you are lucky. However, if the source of the problem can be identified, it can be treated. Physical therapists use a clinical examination and reasoning process to identify the cause(s) of your hip and knee pain so that they can provide you with targeted treatments that address it.
- Learning proper movement techniques. There are several reasons why your hips or knees could be painful. What’s important when dealing with these conditions is to temporarily avoid movements and positions that reproduce or increase your pain, while working on improving soft tissue and joint mobility, and increasing the strength of the muscles that act on the joint. After a period of time, the movements and positions that were previously painful are reintroduced in a dosed manner so that your body has time to adapt to the load. From there, your plan of care is progressed to return you to the activities that you loved but were holding back from participating in.
- Promoting a healthy and active lifestyle. We understand that people may be afraid of living a healthy and active lifestyle for fear of (re)producing pain in their hip and knee joints. But the key is to make sure you’re doing the appropriate amount without significant overloading of the joints, and allowing yourself enough time to rest and recover before doing it again. A healthy and active lifestyle also means supplementing your activity with a well-balanced diet that fuels your body enough to perform. Finally, reducing or learning to manage the stress in your life may be an undervalued aspect of health and active living. But we know from research that stress can make smaller pains into bigger ones. Take the leap of faith with your physical therapist, as the risks of not being healthy and active far outweigh the alternative.
- Keeping future injuries at bay. One of the most frustrating aspects of joint pain is that it never seems to go away completely. Even if you rest for a while and feel better, the injury may rear its ugly head when you go out and start moving again. Healthy and active living goes hand in hand with injury prevention. But it’s strength training that seems to be the exercise mode that gives physically active people more bang for their buck when it comes to injury prevention. Working with a physical therapist can get you on the right path, by working with you personally or connecting you with a good strength and conditioning coach, so that you can become much stronger than before.
What’s the source of my hip and knee pain?
Pain felt in the hips or knees may originate in the joint itself, or it may also be a result of an underlying condition in another part of the body. For example, your lower back, hips, knees, and ankles are part of the same kinetic chain, meaning they make up a combination of weight-bearing joints that must function together in harmony in order for your body to function properly. Therefore, a problem with one of these joints may transmit abnormal forces to another. If one part of the kinetic chain is out of balance, stress or strain may be placed on another.
You may have also been diagnosed with:
- Tendinitis: an irritation of the tendon, likely due to overuse.
- Bursitis: an irritation of the bursa, likely due to overuse.
- Patellofemoral pain syndrome: instability of the kneecap, that may result in irritation of the surrounding structures
- Osteoarthritis: a condition involving normal aging of the joint, that can sometimes become irritated.
- A traumatic injury like an ACL, meniscus, or other major ligament tears
Our physical therapists – i.e. any of our physiotherapists, athletic therapists, or chiropractors – can help determine if any of these conditions (or something else) is the source of your hip or knee pain, and create a program for you that involves a combination of in-house treatments and self-management strategies and exercises to get immediate relief and long-lasting benefits.
We can help you find relief today
If you are experiencing hip or knee pain, we want you to know that we are here to help. Our physical therapy team can help you reduce your pain both temporarily and permanently.
Make an appointment with Leaps and Bounds: Performance Rehabilitation today to get the relief you deserve!