Knee and Hip

Hey gymnasts!

I’m sure you can imagine that, with all the jumping and landing in gymnastics, the knees and lower leg get a lot of impact. And, with all the splits and kicks, the hips get a lot of stress too.

Common injuries in the knee and lower leg include:

• Osgood-Schlatter Disease (pain right below the kneecap where the tendon pulls)

• Singding Larsen Johansson (pain at the bottom end of the kneecap where the tendon pulls)

• Patellofemoral Syndrome (pain at the joint between the knee cap and the thigh bone)

• Tibial Stress fractures (pain along the shin)

• ACL tears (tear of the ligament in the middle of the knee often with a motion that twists the knee)

• Meniscus tears (tear of the cartilage between the shin bone and thigh bone)

• Osteochondritis Dissecans (OCD) of the knee (breakdown of cartilage at the knee)

Common injuries at the hip include:

• Hip flexor strains (strain of the muscle at the front of your hip)

• Hamstring strains (strain of the muscle at the back of your thigh)

• Ischial tuberosity apophysitis (a pull at your butt bone where your hamstring attaches)

• Hip labral tears (tear of the tissues around your hip joint)

• FAI: femoral-acetabular impingement (pinching where your thigh bone meets your pelvis)

If you have pain, you should consult a medical professional to guide your care - especially if you can point to the spot that hurts with one finger, if your pain has been going on for more than a week, or even if it doesn’t hurt all the time but it keeps coming back.

Here are a couple of exercises you can do to strengthen your knee and hip. Strengthening your hips can help protect your knee joint because strong hips can keep your knee in good alignment and can help absorb some of the forces of your landings. Quiet landings tell you that you are distributing the forces of your landings.