How To Fix Inner Knee Pain In 2 Minutes
Do you have pain on the inside of your knee right here? But there’s a rare issue that we find here as manual physical therapists that you can correct at home and find on your own at home as well. It’s often mistaken for a meniscal injury, it can be related to a meniscus injury. But I’m going to show you exactly what I mean here. It’s called a tibial shift, and I’m going to explain how to fix it, how to find it and what this is exactly.
Real quick, my name is Dr. David Mann off and I’m a specialist physical therapist, I’m a manual therapist over in El Paso manual physical therapy. And this channel here is dedicated to helping people stay healthy, active and mobile. while avoiding unnecessary surgery, injections and medications, please subscribe to our channel. And don’t forget to turn on your notifications. So that you can hear about whenever we release new videos, as we put out one to two every single week.
So let’s get to it guys, by tibial shift remembering those skeleton over for just a moment. So you can see what I mean. What the tibia is, here’s the thigh bone. This is this is the femur, and this is the tibia, the shinbone, you have a little bone in the outset called the fibula. But we’re talking about the femur and the tibia joints, but the big part of the knee joints.
And what happens in this issue, if you have pain on the inside of your knee right here, this tibia, the shin bone can slide inwards just a bit, you see that that little shift that I’m making right there. And when it shifts inwards, like so the edge of this bone pops out on the inside of the knee very subtly, and it can get real tender and painful.
And if you’ve got pain on the inside of the knee might have been more so when you bend your knee or straighten your knee. But it’s definitely pinpointed on the inside of your knee, not the front, not the outside at the top, not in the back of the knee so much. But on the inside, you might have this tibial shift, let me tell you how to find it.
Now as a therapist, I know where all the bones are at. I know how to find all this stuff really easy. But I always pointed out to my patients that I find it on. If you find your kneecap right here and just inside about where it hurts if you got this pain, it’s really easy to find, you can feel the bony part of your knee joint right here, if you just slide from the top down and you can feel the bumps on there.
If you compare that to the other side. And if your painful side, it’s a little bit tender. And where it puts it pokes out the most if you just rub it a bit, if you dig in there, gently, of course, and press on the area and you find that it’s tender, then you might have that tibial shift. So go and do it on yourself.
You might use your thumbs or your fingers, whatever you feel you need, but do both at the same time just like she’s doing and slide downwards and inwards, to where the bones are, you only have to spend about this distance right here. And once you find a little bump, like right around this area, it could be a little more on the front a little more on the inside of the knee.
That is likely a tibial shift. It’s going to be tender; it’s going to be painful. And when we do it here in the clinic, usually I’ll find the spine I’ll just give an impression that the patient’s ready to jump in. They’re telling me that’s where it hurts, you found the spot. So if you’ve got that what I do as a therapist is I’m doing techniques to shove this outwards like this. And I’ll actually show you real quick, but you may not be a therapist and can’t quite do that to yourself.
So I’m going to show you how to shift your bone back inwards, there’s two things you’re going to do. One is a hands-on technique that simulates like what I did. And the other one is a little exercise, hey, you need to loosen up the joint and get it to settle gradually back in where it’s supposed to be.
Now before I show you that it’s wanting to explain a little bit about the harm in leaving your knee joint like this, it’s actually an alignment issue. So going back to the skeleton here, if your knee joint is shifted a little bit all the way back towards you.
If your knee joint is shifted like that, how it’s showing you the meniscus, which is a big, huge chunk of cartilage that sits right here gets compressed awkwardly, the cartilage behind the kneecap on the thigh bone also gets shifted over along with the bottom with the tibia with the shin bone. And so if your knees operating like that over the long term, you bet you’re working on a meniscus tear or some arthritis problem.
So you’ve got to make sure that you take care of this inner knee pain right away and get that alignment back to normal. restore it so that your knee can bend without any issues and that tenderness on the inside of your knee goes away.
Here’s how you do the exercise to shift your shin bone back outwards. Let’s pretend she’s got the issue right here. What you’re going to do is with your right hand, make a C shape with your hand and this part of your hand is going to go right below where it’s tender.
So usually it’s about right in this area. So then put your hand about right there. Your other has to come on the outside of your thigh. Your knee, you’re going to have to lean your body as close as you can have your leg and push against each other, to shifting your knee over. And as best as you can keep the bodyweight through your leg as relaxed as possible, just try to generate a bunch of force through your arms and make it comfortable, you can spread out the force to your hands, you can get your hands a little flatter.
And you’re going to do this for about 20-30 seconds or so you could do it more than that it generally doesn’t hurt you to do it more. But I found that you get diminishing returns after about 20 to 30 seconds. And this exercise I’m going to show you next is what needs to happen along with this to get to the long lasting effect.
Are you going you’re pushing as hard as you can, you’re really getting in there and trying to get that to shift over Be careful not to press on the tender Spidey right below it. And then if you’re, if this is bothering you on the outside, just get your palm a little flatter against your thigh. And same down here agreeable to get your palm closer to your calf.
Yeah, like that, that’s probably a bit more comfortable for you. Good. So after you’ve done that for about 20 or 30 seconds, then here’s the exercise you’re going to do. But stand up so I can show you. You’re going to turn your foot all the way and worse. straighten out your legs too bit. Yep. And then you’re going to scoop towards you and bend your leg as much as it will go under the seat.
If your chair blocks it, that’s cool. Just stop right where you are as far as you can go. And then start over again, scoop your foot in words and drag your foot towards your seat. And you’re gonna do 20 to 30 reps like that. There you go. So just keep going here, as I’m explaining a couple things.
Doing this motion forces you to fire certain muscles in your thigh, one of the hamstring muscles, and some of the groin muscles that help to get the alignment more stabilized within your knee joints. And this is a beginner exercise, this is not wanting to be doing long term.
Usually, the root of this knee alignment issue is some foot weakness or some hip weakness, that’s translating down to the down to the knee. doing this exercise along with that shift on yourself just helps to get the alignment right.
Once the knee alignment is restored, you feel like your knee pain has gone away on the inside of the knee, then it’s important to get over to some glute exercises, maybe some calf and foot exercises, and make sure that you’re moving better when you’re walking. And when you’re exercising.
Typically a nice alignment issue like this, if it’s happened recently, and you started to get that pain, say within the past few weeks, you should be over this within a month tops. If you’ve had that inner knee pain for several months, a year or more, then doing this exercise might be the case for you. You might even be doing this exercise for many months, maybe even a year or more to get that to diminish down.
And if it doesn’t continue to get better the pain is and continue to diminish. It may mean that you need to go see a specialist like a male therapist like myself to get that knee joint to settle in. Because there may be more factors like a meniscus tear, you might you may be arthritic in the joint, you may need to move the joint in other ways that you can’t quite do on your own to get this joint to settle properly.
But I can tell you from experience, I’ve had this issue myself. And it still comes up from time to time, especially if I get a little weaker. Like for instance, right now we just had a baby, it’s been three months, I have not been going to the gym, as I usually have been trying to get sleep with a newborn, it’s important.
Plus I have three other kids. So it’s not an easy task for me to get to the gym. And I’ve caught myself doing this exercise a couple of times and pushing money into correct alignment. But I’ve never had an issue that lasts more than a day. It’s usually just a quick thing within a day and it’s over. And I don’t feel it again for a long time.
But to me, it’s telling me that I’m getting weak in certain muscles, and I better get on it real soon. So don’t run into a bigger problem later on. So as far as how often to do this exercise, I would do this exercise every two hours, maybe even every hour. 20 or 30 reps shouldn’t take you more than a few minutes. And it shouldn’t be super tiring.
If anything, you’ll feel like the inner thigh work, the hamstring, the inner hamstring might be a little bit tired. But it shouldn’t be anything that tears you out so much that you’re sweating or getting a huge workout and stuff. So guys, I hope this video was helpful for you if you’ve got that inner knee pain, and you try this out on your own and you had a success or if you’re having trouble with it, drop a comment, let us know.
So we can get back to you as fast as possible and want to know if you were successful too, so that you can keep your meniscus healthy in your cartilage healthy. Give us a like as well. And don’t forget to subscribe and hit that notification bell so that you can get notified whenever we put out our brand new videos every week. Have a wonderful day guys.