In this video, we are going to look at when a knee sleeve can be useful to stop knee pain and the various types.
Video Transcript
Your knees are one of the most vulnerable parts of your body.
Any injuries can range from being annoying through to completely stopping your life.
Knee injuries can be caused by a range of causes from inherited health problems, through injury, or your immune system being overactive, through to simply getting older.
Severe pain requires expert help and appropriate treatment to address the cause of your knee pain and to minimise the pain.
According to research published in the Journal of Strength and Condition research in 2012, mild to moderate pain can be helped via the use of knee sleeves.
These offer light assistance and the compression helps to increase circulation aiding the healing process.
They can also help to reduce the time you need to recover following your workout.
In addition, they can also be extremely useful when you are recovering from injury. Depending on your exact cause, they can help with stabilising your knee joint to avoid moving your knee beyond its natural limits. It may also help with maintaining your balance.
Another further benefit, was that mild compression can help to reduce pain. A study by Arthritis Research and Therapy in 2017 reported that they help reduce pain and help with a lack of joint stability associated with arthritis.
Arthritis is often associated with poor circulation so waste materials and toxins can well up in your knees triggering inflammation and stiffness. Compression sleeves help to improve the circulation gently helping to speed up recovery.
They are a remarkably simple solution if you have had a knee injury, helping to reduce the likelihood of further injury.
Types of Knee Sleeves
It is worth mentioning that the terms Knee Sleeves and Knee Braces often get used to describe sleeves. However, a sleeve is a light, thin fabric that is pulled up and over your knees. A brace, on the other hand, is used to restrict the movement of your knee, in a particular direction.
It is typically used for severe knee injuries, caused by twisting and overextension where the normal “groove” of the knee has been exceeded. Frequently, these are prescribed by a medical professional or therapist.
In this video, we are discussing sleeves rather than braces.
There are several specific uses for knee sleeves.
- Warming your knees.
By providing light compression of your knee, they act to warm the knee area. There are many reasons this can be useful. In sports where there is a lot of waiting between competition, these can help to keep the knees more mobile and flexible. Long queues in competitions and waiting for equipment at the Gym spring to mind….
Weightlifters frequently use sleeves for this purpose so that they can lift cleanly even after a long wait.
- Supporting your knee joints.
These types of sleeves tend to be thicker and typically use Neoprene between 5mm and 7mm to provide additional resistance. They can help to ensure that the knees stay in alignment and help to give confidence in more extreme movements such as heavy squatting and powerlifting.
It is worth saying that regular use of these sleeves can create a dependency. Often underlying weaknesses should be addressed by refining your alignment, training proper muscle memory, and strengthening the supporting ligaments and tendons. Overuse of a sleeve can make misalignment more difficult to fix.
- In some cases, the patella tendon can flick outwards when your knees are subjected to extreme loads. This causes a lot of pain in and behind the kneecap. Patella straps can help with this condition. These are a smaller, specialist form of sleeves.
There are a wide variety of knee sleeves available. It is important to select the one best suited to your circumstances. Make sure to carefully look at the description to check it is a match!
It is also important that the sleeves stay in place. When you have a shortlist, have a read through the reviews to check how other people have got on. These will also give you additional insight.
There is a big problem with fake reviews. My preference is to look for items which have hundreds of reviews. These are much more difficult to fake!
The material they are made from also have a bearing on their suitability. For powerlifting, features like breathability are less important than for a sport where you may sweat a lot over a match
I hope you find these tips from Steve’s Health Answers really useful and please let me know how you get on.
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