CategoriesKnee Pain

Why Tight Quadriceps Exacerbate Knee Pain & The Solution Is Not With Stretching

One of the most confusing things I have come across over the past 15 years as a rehabilitation trainer working with many complex injuries and movement dysfunctions is how confusing the role of the quadriceps can be with relation to knee pain. In most cases of knee pain there is significant stiffness at the knee joint leading to conclusions of tight quadriceps and hip flexors. For years I believed the answer for people who had limited knee flexion needed to spend more time stretching and foam rolling their quads and hip muscles to restore full range to the joint. It makes perfect sense, the muscle is noticeably tight and not even close to its full range of motion so it must need stretching to improve it. And while some showed some great results, there were many who showed little improvement with some even becoming worse! This failure led me to find that the solution was not to be found with stretching but from changing the underlying cause of the stiffness. This article I will show you how to find this and what things you can do to correct the problem for good.