Knee Pain . . . Will Massage Really Help Me?

There is a lot of knee pain out there.  And even more loss of range of motion (ROM) in the knees.  There IS hope, however, in massage.  Knee pain is simply a manifestation of dysfunctional posture, coming from the hips (pelvis), which is also known as the core of your body. When the hips are tipped forward, back, or twisted, it has a direct impact on your knees.  As the femur comes from the hip to connect to the knee joint, if it's coming at the correct angle, no problem.  But from a tipped pelvis, the femur is then coming toward the knee joint at a posturally incorrect angle.  This causes the bones in the knee joint to be crooked, causing wear and tear on the cartilage.  Which, as many people know, wears away until the knee is bone on bone and hurts like the devil.  That is usually when knee replacements happen.
The goal then, is to get the skeleton back into correct postural alignment.  Some people upon hearing the word posture, thinks, "I've got to go to the chiropractor!"  That's another blog for another day, but suffice it to say here that bones only do what muscles tell them to do and that the reason your pelvis is tipped or crooked, unless you've been involved in a major accident, is on account of muscles that have become chronically tight and contracted, pulling the pelvis one way or another.
The article that I'm adding here is about knees, not the pelvis.  However, as you will see when you read it, the knee joints is positively affected by working which muscles?  Oh yeah, the quadriceps and hamstrings.  Those muscles attach to what?  The Pelvis?  And if the pelvis is tipped, it negatively affects those large leg muscles which pull on the knee and voila, there you have it!  Pain and ROM issues.  So, in the study, when the therapists released the quadriceps and hamstrings, the pain in the knees was relieved.  
It's also good to note that not a lot of pressure or pain was applied to the area to get the relief the client needed.  Another one of those mis-understandings that clients have when they come to me.  Many think that "no pain, no gain", when the opposite is quite true.  The more pain during a massage, the less effective it will be.  Click here for the article on massage and knee pain.

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