Does Massage Help Knee Pain?
I’ve had five knee surgeries torn ACL in both knees, torn PCL, and the right knee tore cartilage and both knees. With the amount of knee pain I’ve been through, I never thought I would get to pain-free knees ever again. let me tell you from my very unpleasant experience, even when you think there is no hope for the knee, a lot of times, the tight muscles and tendons pulling on the knee could be the cause of the real pain.
This is where using a percussion massager. You could have immediate pain relief in a matter of 5 minutes!
Immediate pain relief can be down to releasing three muscle groups and working on some tendons and ligaments. The calf muscle, the quad muscle, and the hamstring are all attached and wrap around the knee. These muscle tendons and ligaments can get tight and pull on the knee joint causing tremendous pain.
My Pain Your Gain
Learning how to release the muscle and tendons around the knee joint 90% of the time will relieve the knee pain. When Stretching is not enough. The knots and trigger points and lactic acid buildup in the fascia can cause muscle and tendon tissue shortening. When this happens, you may not even know that it is actually tight, but you feel the pain in the knee joint.
Some people can think and get confused and believe they have an actual problem with the knee joint itself when tension is being put on The Joint from surrounding muscle groups in tendons. For example, I went around with an extreme amount of pain every day in my knee. After my third surgery, I ended up going to a massage therapist that worked on just my one leg for an hour straight. When I got up from the massage table, I stood and awe to have no pain in the knee joint.
For years, every day there was a pain in the knee joint when I went to sleep when I got up Sunday’s the pain wouldn’t be really noticeable, and other days it would cause me to limp and be unable to Bear much weight on that knee. And within one hour of a trained professional massage therapist working and releasing all the damage from the injuries and the surgeries and the scar tissue, I was pain-free within 1 hour.
as time went on, I had other car accidents other sport-related injuries. I got pretty well knowledgeable about muscle tendons and ligaments and their effects on the body, and how to self-massage and release them. I’m going to go more in detail below on how to release muscles with percussion massage therapy, alleviating some knee pain within just a few minutes.
How Can I Get Immediate Relief From Knee Pain?
Muscles To Release Stopping Knee Pain
- Quad Muscle Top Of The Thigh
- Hamstrings And Hamstring Muscle Back Of Thigh
- Calf Muscle
- Tendons In Front And Back Of Knee
Releasing Quad Muscle
I usually start with using your percussion massager. Just work your way around up and down the quad muscle vertically and horizontally until you find Tender areas and work them outspend about 2 minutes on the quad and then move on
Before starting your percussion massage, you can prep with some peppermint essential oil or tiger balm, or Icy Hot. Some muscle rub before your percussion massage can help open up the capillaries and get blood flow before the actual massage is performed. I’ve only done this in extreme cases when I knew I needed everything possible to relieve me of my tension and pain. I don’t always use a muscle rub first, but it can help a lot.
Calf Muscle
After releasing the thigh quad, I go to the calf muscle and repeat the same process to find tender areas and release them. The calf muscle is a little harder to work with.
It is best to prop up your foot to relax your calf muscle completely. It is a tiny but strong muscle that will not release the trigger points if tensed up a percussion massager.
Hamstring Or Back Of The Thigh
It is best to lay on your side and try to fully relax your leg reach-around the back of your leg with your percussion massager and trying to find the tender areas.
Midway up, you will find where the hamstrings attach right below the buttocks if you dig deeper. A lot of tension builds up here where the hamstrings attach to the Bone inflammation and tightness will get inflamed around the tendon muscle and bone. Work in this area for 2 minutes.
Tendons
Now on to the tendons. This is where I would use a different tool you can YouTube body scraping, and you can go to a professional and get this done. They have some of these little metal scrapers on Amazon you can purchase as well.
These tendon body scrapers you’re going to want to run up and down your tendons lightly, and you will feel the grainy Sandy feeling through the metal tool on your tendons. The idea is to break up the grainy feeling out of your tendons gently.
This is something you will not fully work out on your first session, and it’s something you’re not going to go hard on.
You’ll want to take your time and let the body heal a few days before doing this again?
Now that you have worked all the muscles above and below the knee and work the tendons, you should have experienced tremendous relief
Caution
There are some sensitive nerves in the back of the knee. This area should mostly be avoided with the percussion massager, and when doing tendon scraping, be very careful in the back of the knee. Go very light at first if you feel a little pinging, stinging, pain, then back off that area and listening to the body.
You will find the nerves in the back of the knee. They are not something to be messed with. Nerve damage could be caused by performing any massage on the nerves in the back of the knee. always listen to the body.
There is discomfort in a massage, just like there’s discomfort in stretching but do not ignore pain when performing massage or muscle scraping. Just like when you’re stretching, you don’t push it until you literally tear your muscle and half when stretching, the same with the massage. Remember to listen to the body and your recovery time, and your body will respond quickly and get the proper healing you’re needing.
Massage Gun For Runners Knee
With runner’s knee, it comes back to what I was saying up above here the pain in the knee as from the surrounding muscles and tendons getting too tight or building up acid and trigger points shortening the muscle in different angles pulling the knee out of place or putting unnecessary pressure on the joint applying string to the nerves then sending the pain signal to the brain. Yes, you feel the pain in the knee itself, but 90% of the time, the pain is from the shortening of the muscles from exercise.
Stretching is not always enough. Sometimes it can cause more damage if a muscle gets knotted with a lot of trigger points. The muscles actually shortened from the trigger points in the muscle itself don’t need to be lengthened.
By stretching a muscle that is all knotted up from activity, your Link then parts of the muscle that don’t need to be lengthened. This is why if you are a high-performance athlete, and most of them do see a professional massage therapist once a week. But using a percussion massager will not only help you release these trigger points.
They will help you find them and places you didn’t know you had them? Once you find these trigger points and tender areas, you can begin to release them manually or with a percussion massager itself. Once you work this above and below the knee and get the tendons worked out, you should experience tremendous relief in the knee.
A question gets asked his percussion massagers good for runners, yes! Percussion massagers are good for any athlete putting a strain on the muscles. Like other massages, Percussion massage creates the blood flow in the soft tissue. And stagnant from the release of the toxins of lactic acid and the byproducts of the muscle burning glycogen at a high rate.
After all, this and if you’re still experiencing knee pain, it will probably be time to consult your doctor and get an MRI imaging done of your knee, examining any cartilage damage or actual tendon damage.
If you experienced an injury from a fall or an impact Sport and you haven’t gone to the doctor yet for an MRI imaging, then I recommend you do such a further massage and stretching could cause more damage to your knee, and you need to know what you’re dealing with before you start any type of recovery program from a serious injury.
But for someone who is just experiencing knee pain from everyday use is pretty common as we get older. Whether we’re active or not are tendons, ligaments, and muscles are always shortening selves, which puts a strain on the joints. Percussion massage Other stretches can bring the knee back to Optimal Health.
Massage Gun For Knee Tendonitis
Percussion massage can help tendonitis of the knee, but the best thing for tendons has to get more glutamine or bone broth in your diet. And getting a muscle-tendon scraping done, you can Google this and see some YouTube videos and pictures of people getting this performed on them.
Percussion massager is going to deliver a percussion massage but not the benefits that can be received from a muscle scraping or tendon scraping with these metal little smooth devices going along the tendons you will feel a grainy popping feeling through the tendons. As tendons get torn stressed they will develop this grainy feeling.
Overuse tendons themselves can get little micro-tears, and little knots build up in them, and they will not be released very well with most massages or percussion massage. The best thing for them is a faccia type of release with a body scraper.
Can You Use Massage Gun On Knee?
Can you use a massage gun directly on your knee? I do not recommend using it directly on the knee; however, using the massage gun around the knee is okay and can benefit the knee itself.
I went into more detail on this above here, so I’ll keep it breathe here but releasing the muscles below the knee and above the knee and working on the tendons themselves with other forms of massage can release tension that has been applied to the knee a lot of times knee pain is not the knee itself.
Even though that’s where the pain is coming from, most of the time, the pain is what they call deferred pain, in which you feel the pain in the knee. Still, the pain is actually coming from somewhere else or in the case of the knee.
The knee is put into inflammation in pain because the tendons ligaments and muscles or shortened tightened or trigger points are pulling on the joints, causing the pain. You might want to first release the damages and trigger points around the knee before actually working on the knee itself. The knee is mostly comprised of bone and tendon and nerve and cartilage. There’s not a lot of massages that can be done to the knee itself.
knee pain treatments
How Do You Fix A Tight IT Band?
The best thing for a tight IT band is foam rolling. Percussion massage is a great way to start and loosen up the IT band and become excruciating tender to the point that you cannot even bear foam rolling. I like to loosen up the IT band with a percussion massager, very simple, probably the easiest body part to percussion massager.
You can do it on the entire body as on the IT band all you need to do is run your percussion massager on at the desired speed and move vertically and horizontally up and down the side of the leg along with the IT band once this has been done for about 2 minutes. Then you can go to foam rolling.
I have several foam rollers that I use. Still, it can be so tender for the IT band that the firmer foam rolling is just too much. They sell some really soft foam rollers that you can get almost as soft as a sponge or a little firmer than a firm couch cushion. You can start with this softer foam rolling. Once that is comfortable, you can move up to a denser form roller, and that right there is the best recipe to loosen up a tight IT band and, of course, stay hydrated after that and keep up with a normal stretching and yoga routine.
Take Away
In a nutshell, the best advice doesn’t underestimate the human body, and just because you feel pain within the knee itself, do not get discouraged that you have permanent damage. The pain may be actually not be coming from the knee most of the time. That’s the case, better known as deferred pain.
When it comes to the knee joint I’m seeing that 90% of the time the pain is from the lower calf or hamstring and even the upper quad all of these muscles can pull the knee into a painful position putting strain on the tendons and the nerves of the knee itself.
it can be confusing and frustrating to have all this deferred pain and actually not have the understanding of where the pain is actually coming from.
Unfortunately for me and my experience of dealing with 20 years of chronic knee pain in and out of car accidents in surgeries and hundreds of hours of physical therapy I had to learn the hard way about the human body and nerve system and muscles I highly recommend if you’re having any type of pain search the internet its a great place these days you can YouTube and learn more about Anatomy muscle-tendon ligament attachment and learned how the anatomy really lays out in the body.
When you look at it on an Anatomy tissue level, you can see the body for what it really is. It is an amazing, unbelievable machine able to perform and put up with extreme conditions and adaptability to almost any type of environment so put your body in an environment it can survive. It will Thrive and become stronger than you’ve ever been. It doesn’t matter what age you are.
Their people in their 60s Start a healthy Fitness lifestyle and in their 80s running marathons and ultra-marathons, things that I couldn’t imagine myself doing in my twenties, so keep a positive mindset keep working on yourself. It doesn’t matter what age you are. Your body is meant to survive, and if it’s put in a survival environment with the right nutrients and the right therapy, your body will grow and do things that you never thought were possible to stay strong, happy, and healthy!
