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 Lifted kneecapsModerators: Moderators Jump to page : 1 2 Now viewing page 1 [25 messages per page] | View previous thread :: View next thread |
| Yoga -> Iyengar Yoga | Message format |
Bay Guy |
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Expert Yogi Posts: 2479    Location: A Blue State | |||
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| kulkarnn |
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| Bay Guy |
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Expert Yogi Posts: 2479 Location: A Blue State | |||
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| tourist |
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Expert Yogi Posts: 8442   | |||
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| riftweaver |
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| kulkarnn |
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| savasana2 |
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| not an anatomy expert. nick et al will come along to address this in a more microscopic way. but my understanding of this instruction is to engage the muscles of the front thigh and the muscles of the back thigh to the midline, that is toward the bone. simultaneously move the muscles of the inner thigh laterally...but specific to correcting hyperextension using the muscles of the upper thigh(because you can also make a correction from the foot, toes, and ankle!), you make a mind-body connection with the back inner knee, and ensure that it is moving up and forward toward the front of the room as opposed to pressing back and down, hence hyperxtending the knee... hyperextension happens how? when the thigh bone at the distal(knee) portion is pushed back, and it the proximal portion(pushd forward OR the shin bone at it's proximal portion is pushed back towards the back body while the distal portion at the ankle is forced forward...you oonly asked about the engagement of the upper leg muscles in relation to hyperextension, so i've only addressed that. i don't even know if i did it correctly or satisfactorily so i won't attempt to explain the other corrections...i'm going to quit while i'm ahead until nick and others get here...  Edited by savasana2 2007-05-01 1:42 PM | |||
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| TampaEric |
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| shalamOM |
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| savasana2 |
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| tourist |
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Expert Yogi Posts: 8442 | If it hurts to "lift the kneecap" you are doing it wrong  You should not feel pain in the back of the knee or feel any edge of the kneecap digging in anywhere. It is actually easier to see the action in dandasana. If the heels lift off the floor, you have work to do | ||
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| Bay Guy |
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Expert Yogi Posts: 2479 Location: A Blue State | |||
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| Nick |
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 Location: London, England | Hi Bay Guy, Good question-you could easily write a book on this to do with yoga. I'll go through a couple of things I'm sure everyone's heard of, but the thought process helps get my poor brain in gear. Reciprocal Inhibition: Contraction of muscles on one side of a joint causes the antagonists on the opposite side of the joint to relax-if this didn't happen, the antagonists would tear every time the agonists contracted. So lifting the kneecap, which actually happens throughout knee extension, helps to relax the hamstrings. Unfortunately, lifting the kneecaps, in my opinion, is over-taught inthe yoga world, and often leads to knee hyper-extension. In standing postures, you often see the calf muscles become prominent, like in the front leg of trikonasana-if you find that the calves get tired in standings, this could be the reason-from personal exerience. Vastus medialis: The are four quadriceps-each one exerts a pull on the kneecap, which then pulls on the tibia-this pulley arrangement makes for powerful forces to be created. If you think of each muscles as being like a guy with a rope, and the kneecap as being a wild horse, and each man is pulling on the horse, then vastus medialis will tend to pull the kneecap medially as well as up-vastus lateralis will pull laterally and up. What sometimes happens is that because of muscle imbalance, the vastus medialis is too weak, causing the kneecap to deviate laterally as you extend your knee-so a lot of rehab work is concentrated on improving patellar tracking. I heard about this work twenty years ago-it was appearing in all the national papers. So it's practically common knowledge-trouble is, people over-use it or mis-apply it-then the knee hyper-extension problems surface again. Lombard's paradox and the Closed Kinetic chain: Lombard observed that when we stand up from a chair, both the hamstrings and the quads fire-what is happening? Theoretically they should be cancelling each other out and we would never get up. But the force of hamstring contraction overcomes the quads at the hip, and the force of quad contraction overcomes the hamstrings at the knee-then the knee and hip both extend, and we stand up. Phew This is called "Co-contraction." Co-contraction becomes the rule of movmeent in the closed kinetic chain, and we should try to utilize this in standing and sitting postures, or in handstands or headstands, where the upper extremities become the limbs responsible for provding the force to drive us away from the ground. More later? Nick | ||
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| tourist |
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Expert Yogi Posts: 8442 | Whoa! I actually read AND understood all of nick and purna's posts  And on only one coffee... We actually discussed this a bit in class last night. In tadasana, to get the broadening of the back upper thighs required to keep the lumbar long, the front thigh has to roll inward. If you don't lift the kneecap (properly - and I agree this is often taught incorrectly even and especially by Iyengar teachers. Sorry folks, it seems to be true!) the whole front of the leg rotates inward and you get knocked knees. Keeping the quads engaged keeps the kneecaps in the center of the front of the leg. | ||
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| Nick |
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Location: London, England | |||
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| TampaEric |
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| tourist |
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Expert Yogi Posts: 8442 | I have one teacher who absolutely goes nuts when people talk about hyper extended knees. It is apparently not correct terminology - Nick, you can weigh in here. Anyway, yes, that is basically what I am talking about - what is commonly called hyper extended knees. In dandasana you can really see if you are pressing the calf into the floor to "lift the kneecap" and you can usually feel the kneecap digging in as well. People who think they are flexible in forward bends get a little miffed when I holler "heels down!"  I have them really lengthen their legs out and press out through the feet then LOOK at the quads as they engage them. That usually gets the "aha!" look I am trying for | ||
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| Nick |
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Location: London, England | Hi Glenda, To me, without looking it up, knee hyper-extension is when the femur glides forwards over the tibia. When you are standing, and the leg is straight, the muscles around the knee are not active-there is a self-locking mechanism in the knee joint, so that we can stand up with less physical effort. This is why schoolboys have developed the trick of making someone fall over by getting someone to kneel down behind the victim, and then someone else pushing them from the front-this was very popular when I was at school, anyway If the muscles were active, the knee would not bend so easily, and the victim would stay erect. When the knee hyper-extends in yoga postures, it is for one of several reaons, all of which make the posture 'easier' to do, but not so therapeutically valuable. In foward bends, it makes it easir to grab the feet. In triangle, it makes it easier to get the body parallel to the floor and the leg 'straight.' I think the answer is to teach hamstring contraction as well as quad contraction-so the joint is supported from the rear, rather than 'hanging' off the contraction of the quadriceps at the front. One of the reasons that i think the kneecap lifting is so difficult to teach is that it is simply not the way we organize our movment or posture-we organize action, not contraction. Alllied to this is the fact that both the hams and the quads are active in real life in straightening the leg-using the quad just isn't natural. Nick | ||
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| riftweaver |
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tourist - 2007-05-02 6:53 PM Anyway, yes, that is basically what I am talking about - what is commonly called hyper extended knees. In dandasana you can really see if you are pressing the calf into the floor to "lift the kneecap" and you can usually feel the kneecap digging in as well. People who think they are flexible in forward bends get a little miffed when I holler "heels down!" I have them really lengthen their legs out and press out through the feet then LOOK at the quads as they engage them. That usually gets the "aha!" look I am trying for I don't think I can lift my heels off the ground in dandasana even if I want to. I've tried, just to see what hypertextended knees feels like! It wasn't possible for me though. Maybe because I'm not "really flexible" in forward bends! --Jason | |||
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| tourist |
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Expert Yogi Posts: 8442 | Nick - I think you are right. But our (less painful) joke in school was to go behind someone and hit them in the back of the knee ever so slightly with our own knee. They kinda crumple! All anatomical discussion aside, it really is the basic problem of students only working with the part of the body they can see and concentrating action around the knee because that is the part that moves. So our biggest job as teachers is to help bring awareness to the whole leg, yes? | ||
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| Nick |
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Location: London, England | Hi Glenda, Yep, I guess so-integration of the functional input from each joint and the muscles that cross them-rather than isolation of the above-that's called body-building. (cue look of disdain Nick | ||
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| bredmond812 |
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| OrangeMat |
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tourist - 2007-05-01 7:21 PM If it hurts to "lift the kneecap" you are doing it wrong You should not feel pain in the back of the knee or feel any edge of the kneecap digging in anywhere. It is actually easier to see the action in dandasana. If the heels lift off the floor, you have work to do I've taken class with a teacher who encourages us to engage the quads so much that the heels do lift off the floor. No, maybe it wasn't in dandasana but in upavistha konasana. It was more her instruction that the back of the knees touch the floor while the sit bones maintained contact, but yes, she did specifically say heels off the floor. I would think that action is inappropriate in both poses, because it's never felt "right" to me to have my heels come off the floor in either one. | |||
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| Nick |
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Location: London, England | |||
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