258 of 262 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Simple techniques create amazing results., May 18, 2006
This review is from: Treat Your Own Knees: Simple Exercises to Build Strength, Flexibility, Responsiveness and Endurance (Paperback)
This remarkable little book may change the way you think about knee pain. Instead of focusing on pain symptoms and where they originate, the author focuses on what your knee does - and how to improve those functions with simple exercises. The only anatomy lesson you need is to know where your quadriceps and hamstring muscles are - front and rear of your thigh respectively.
He identifies four functions in your knee: strength, flexibility, proprioception/balance, and endurance. If you have unexplainable knee pain, you probably just need to improve your knee function in one or more of the four functional areas. The author suggests simple exercises in each functional category.
To develop strength, the single most important muscles to develop are your quadriceps. There are many exercises you can do to strengthen your quads. The author suggests a very simple floor exercise.
To develop flexibility, the author suggests a quad and a hamstring stretch. The exercises he suggests can be done standing or on the floor.
Proprioception might be a strange word to you. It was to me. It is probably best described as a combination of coordination and balance. Can you accurately sense what your knee is doing? Does it react appropriately to changes as you move? This is what proprioception is all about. The simple and interesting exercise the author suggests to improve proprioception is simply to stand on one leg for 30 seconds. Then switch legs. (It's ok to have a wall or chair to help catch you if you start to fall.) You might find this exercise easy to master. If so, the author suggests doing the exercise with your eyes closed. This may require considerable practice!
The author suggests that you can build endurance simply by walking or stationary bicycling.
And that's the entire program for treating your knee pain. Some readers may feel letdown or short-changed. What about all the anatomy lessons other practitioners give you? What about issues relating to your tendons, ligaments, bones, and cartilage? What is the theory behind this skimpy program?
Chapter 6 gives you the surprising answers to these questions. The author reviews many scientific studies on knee pain. The studies (based on X ray or MRI testing) show that the existence and/or severity of knee pain/disability have little correlation to the amount of knee deterioration. Many people with severe knee deterioration reported no pain, and some had their symptoms decline over time. The factors most closely linked to knee pain/disability were muscle strength, obesity, age, and psychological health. The author is a physical therapist and not a dietician, gerontologist, or psychologist. His knee program does as much for your knee as science suggests physical therapy can do.
The author recognizes that surgery and medications seem to help a lot of people, but the available research suggests that most people will benefit from the low-tech solutions he offers.
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142 of 145 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Help heal yourself., November 18, 2004
This review is from: Treat Your Own Knees: Simple Exercises to Build Strength, Flexibility, Responsiveness and Endurance (Paperback)
I have had 16 years of knee pain originally brought on from a heavy knock to the knee and then exasperated by basketball and a lack of knowledge of how to solve the problem. This book helped almost immediately, with excellent detail and practical activities to treat the various aspects of knee health. I have had some great physiotherapists but even the best of them couldn't explain the detail in easy to understand terms like this book did. Furthermore, the practical activities can be implemented quickly into your daily routine. It may be the best ten dollars you ever spend if you have knee pain, just because it should limit your the time you spend waiting in a physiotherapists office.
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80 of 82 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
what you need and nothing extra, May 3, 2006
This review is from: Treat Your Own Knees: Simple Exercises to Build Strength, Flexibility, Responsiveness and Endurance (Paperback)
This book doesn't waste your time - it just reports what research says has been effective and then lays out a simple routine of exercises you can do at home, with extensions if you want to go further. I've had good results from following basically the same routine he suggests - it's given me back hope that fifty-year-old knees can survive a running program after all, and it's helped me avoid surgery which probably wasn't needed. It also cut through a lot of conflicting and confusing diagnoses and went straight to advice on how to avoid pain - who cares about the exact cause if it goes away?
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