How To Fix Hyperextended Knees

Recovery From A Hyperextended Knee

A mild knee hyperextension can be healed in 2-4 weeks, provided that you take proper rest and follow the recommended physical therapy. Some knee pain medications may also be prescribed. However, if your knee went through a serious ligament tear, then you may require a surgical procedure. This kind of injury may take 6-9 months to recover, that too only if you take rest and follow the physical therapy closely.

Common Hyperextended Knee Injuries

With a hyperextended knee it is common to injury one or more of the structures in and around the knee. In mild cases, knee hyperextension is not serious but if the knee bends back too far, usually more than around 10 degrees, then other structures, typically the knee ligaments and cartilage, can be damaged which can be more serious.

The most common injuries associated with a hyperextended knee are:

Knee Hyperextension Treatment Procedure

First aid for knee hyperextension includes elevating the knee while lying down or sitting, icing the injury, or using crutches if available. Acetaminophen may be taken to relieve pain. Mild hyperextension may be relieved with rest and physical therapy, while a serious injury may need to be treated with surgery. You may need to wear knee brace for a couple of years to provide support to your injured knee, and accelerate the recovery process.

This article is merely informative, oneHOWTO does not have the authority to prescribe any medical treatments or create a diagnosis. We invite you to visit your doctor if you have any type of condition or pain.

If you want to read similar articles to What Does a Hyperextended Knee Feel like, we recommend you visit our Diseases & secondary effects category.

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I Have Genu Recurvatum How To Fix Genu Recurvatum

The most important thing about treating genu recurvatum is to try to determine the cause of it. If it is due to a muscle weakness issue, then a program of muscle strengthening or bracing may be indicated. In the past, genu recurvatum was very common because polio caused weakness of the quadriceps muscles. If it is due to an injury, and one finds they have genu recurvatum right after an injury, it is important to determine the specific structures that were injured and whether they can be repaired or reconstructed to address the knee hyperextension. We have found that patients with a combined ACL tear and an injury to the lateral collateral ligament have about 3 cm of increased heel height. Treating this type of genu recurvatum is relatively easy and consists of reconstructing both the ACL and the LCL. If one has a chronic injury, or has a bony problem with the tibia, the only solution may be bracing or a surgery where the sideways angle of the tibia, its sagittal slope, is increased with an osteotomy .

Preventing Knee Hyperextension Injuries

There are a couple of things you can do to reduce the risk of a hyperextended knee

• Warm Up: before playing sports so that your body and muscles are ready for action
• Strengthening Exercises: Having good strength and core stability helps to protect the knee from hyperextension injuries. This is particularly important if you are hypermobile

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Ride A Stationary Exercise Bike

A very good exercise to strengthen your hyperextended knee is to ride a stationary exercise bike. It adds strength to your leg muscles and improves flexibility as well.

In the beginning, you should only ride for a few minutes only. Ensure that you start without any tension. As your body becomes used to the exercise, you can increase tension levels and duration.

What Are The Symptoms Of A Hyperextended Knee

When a hyperextended knee first occurs a pop or crack sound can often be heard as the knee is forced backwards. The pop maybe simply a release of gas in a similar way to a joint manipulation but can also signify a possible ligament injury. A crack can sometimes be heard as the bony surfaces in the knee hit each other at speed.

The injury can cause significant pain, bruising and swelling. If the knee swelling is immediate it may signify a ligament rupture but it may come on within the first hour or two. In this case it is more likely to be a standard effusion within the joint itself. In some cases, if the knee ligaments are torn, the knee may feel unstable. But if the instability felt is related to sharp pain then this can be due to a protective pain inhibition response.

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Treatment For Less Severe Cases

Most of the hyperextended knee cases that occur on the sportsfield are treatable without surgery. The depth of care depends from case to case, but the following elements are normally helpful:

Getting plenty of rest with your leg elevated is a must. Youve got to give the ligaments enough time to heal. For minor cases, recovery time can be between 2-4 weeks.

Ice and compression should be part of your treatment. They speed up the healing process and provide relief from the pain and inflammation.

If the pain is too much to bear, you can take over-the-counter pain medications like ibuprofen.

You may benefit from the use of a knee brace while you get back on your feet. Knee braces help prevent further injury.

You should definitely consider a chiropractor. Contrary to popular belief, chiropractors arent just for your spine. A chiropractor who works with all joints can be of invaluable assistance.

Causes Of Knee Hyperextension

When too much weight or pressure forces the knee into extension, the joint can extend further than its true range of motion, causing soft tissue damage, swelling, and potentially tears or strains of the MCL, LCL, ACL, or PCL. Common causes of knee hyperextension include:

• Pushing the femur or patella over the tibia and placing excess stress upon one or more of the major ligaments within the joint. This sort of impact might be experienced by a basketball player stopping unexpectedly and placing all of their weight on one leg to do so.
• Unexpected impact to the front of the knee, causing backward movement of the knee joint, may cause the ACL to strain or tear. This sort of impact would occur in traumatic physical situations, such as a football player being tackled by the legs or a soccer player being slid into.

The method by which a knee hyperextension is caused can predict the severity of the condition. In minor cases, an athlete will notice small amounts of pain or swelling. In traumatic injury, however, hyperextension of the knee may also cause damage to the surrounding ligaments, cartilage and soft tissues.

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Heres A Tip For Avoiding Hyperextended Joints In Your Yoga Practice

If youre teaching this to a yoga student who is hyperextending their elbows, demonstrate the technique first, and then talk them through it. You can also have your student try it with their knees on the floor firstlike a modified Balasana . This takes the weight off the hands, making the cue a bit easier to access.A key to integrating these cues into your yoga is to try them once or twice to align the bones in the pose, and then use them again the next time you practice. This trains proprioception and muscle memory so that within a few sessions, practitioners can engage the muscles directly without attempting to drag the hands toward one another. The cue remains as a resource, however, and can be used to refine the movement.

Exercise Tips To Help Fix Knee Hyperextension

Hyperextension is the forward movement of the knee joint caused by weakness of the quadriceps muscle which functions to actively extend the knee and flex the hip, or injury to the anterior cruciate ligament which passively translates the shin bone or tibia of the lower leg forward. This is common among people with neurological conditions such as stroke, cerebral palsy, and spinal muscular atrophy, and post-surgical patients who have undergone ACL reconstruction and knee replacement. Because of their knee hyperextension, they have problems walking, particularly experiencing knee buckling when bearing weight on their affected leg, and this makes them susceptible to falls.

Here are some useful exercises that can be done to fix knee hyperextension and improve your walking.

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Time Frame: Recovery From Hyperextended Knee Injury

A mild hyperextension of the knee may require only two to four weeks to heal. Rest and physical therapy will be the primary modes of treatment, and knee pain medicines may be prescribed. A knee that has experienced a ligament tear during the injury may require surgery and will likely require physical therapy and six to nine months of convalescence before returning to athletic activity.

How To Treat A Hyperextended Knee

• Immediately after you find your knee is hyperextended, avoid putting weight on the affected knee. Take help of crutches or support of others to move to a safe place. It is important to give rest to the injured limb. Avoid playing sports or activities that may aggravate the condition.
• Elevate your legs, and keep it above the level of heart as you lie down. It will help to reduce the swelling. Compression bandage around the knee helps to reduce pain and swelling.
• Initially applying ice over the area will help to reduce swelling and pain. Anti inflammatory medicines are useful to alleviate pain and reduce swelling.
• After few days, physical therapy is begun to improve the strength of knee joint and range of motion.

In case of the injury is severe and involves ligament or meniscus tear, corrective surgery may be needed to restore normal knee function.

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Taping To Limit Hyperextended Knee

Taping the knee will help limit the amount of Hyperextension in the knee.

You will need Kinesio tape and some help from a friend to apply the tape for you.

Instructions:

• Lie down on your stomach.
• Place a pillow underneath your ankles.
• Apply 2x tape in a cross pattern to the back of the knee.
• Use 30% stretch.

Note: Irritation may occur if the skin behind your knee is sensitive to the adhesive in the tape.

The Injured Knee Ligament

Ligaments are tough bands of tissue. They stabilize our joints and keep our bones together. Our knees have many ligaments. But, four are prone to tears:

Anterior cruciate ligament

This ligament often sprains during sports. Most cases happen after twisting the knee or changing directions. Thus, ACL sprains are common in running and contact sports.

Most of these sprains are severe. So, the recovery tends to be the longest from 4 to 18 months. This period includes surgery and sports-specific physical therapy.

Posterior cruciate ligament

This ligament is twice as strong as the ACL, so PCL sprains are less common. They happen after an extreme force pushes the shin bone with the knee bent.

PCL sprains can happen during car accidents if the dashboard pushes into the bent knee. They can also happen after falling on your knees.

They can take up to 9 months to recover. The treatment is conservative most of the time.

Medial collateral ligament

This ligament is on the inner side of the knee. It can get sprained if the knee bends suddenly inward. Like when running and changing directions.

MCL sprains are common in sports settings. So, most MCL injuries can involve other knee structures. Like the ACL and/or the medial meniscus.

Mild and isolated MCL sprains can take 4-6 weeks to heal. They can take longer depending on the severity and other structures affected.

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Lateral collateral ligament

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Causes Of Hyperextended Knee

Hyperextended knee occurs when the legs are bearing the weight of body. Means the person is standing with his legs extended. The underlying pathophysiology of this condition is backward extension of knee more than its normal range of motion.

Hyperextended knee is a common injury among athletes. Improper landing from a high jump may put pressure on the knee to bend backwards.

Hyperextended knee can also occur when you suddenly land up in a pothole while walking or running. Hyperextension injuries can be mild or severe and it depends on the damage caused to the parts of knee such as the ligaments, tendons, cartilage and menisci.

What Are Its Primary Causes

Knee hyperextension injuries typically occur in a sporting activity that involves contact, jumping, or cutting sports . Forceful knee hyperextension via contact or non-contact injuries commonly injure the ACL, PCL , and other structures such as meniscus, and can even cause bone contusion in the femoral condyle or tibial plateau. The extent of the damage can be as little as a small sprain or strain but other high force injuries can cause complete tears in the ligaments.

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What Causes Hyperextended Knee

Youre probably wondering why do you get hyperextended knee?

Your knee hyperextends, or goes beyond its appropriate range of motion, when inordinate stress is placed on your knee joint ligaments. The most commonly affected ligaments are anterior cruciate ligament and the posterior cruciate ligament .

The kind of force strong enough to provoke hyperextended knee is usually related to sports and accidents.

Contact sports like football and lacrosse are common culprits. But even running can lead to hyperextended knee if you push yourself beyond your limits or dont use proper technique.

Many times, hyperextended knee incidents are caused by an athlete unexpectedly placing all their weight on one leg. This can happen in basketball, for instance, when he goes to make a shot.

Naturally, the impact of being tackled in football or rugby can be enough to push the femur over the patella in a way that puts excess stress over the ligaments in your joint.

The most serious cases of hyperextended knee typically happen during car accidents. Automobile collisions are massive impacts that can cause major damage to your knees surrounding tissue and cartilage.

When Do Hyperextended Knees Occur

There are a number of ways for hyperextension injuries to occur. However, the most common causes include:

* An awkward landing that forces the knee back on itself whilst landing from a jump. For example: a jumping basketball, netball or football player landing with a straight knee that then becomes hyperextended under the landing load.* An opponent striking the front of the knee whilst playing a contact sports. In rugby the shin contacts with a tackling opponent forcing the knee backwards on a fixed foot.* A skier running into an obstacle such as a bank of snow or other obstacle at speed and continuing to travel forward whilst the skis stop suddenly. This often happens when the heel binding doesnt release and so the knee becomes hyperextended. A good reason to make sure you check your bindings are set at the right level before you go skiing!

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Hyperextended Elbows: Heres A Tip For Correcting Hyperextension

Aligning the bones accesses their inherent strength so that yoga poses ultimately require less muscular effort to maintain. For example, in a recent post, we gave a tip on using the big toes to correct the tendency for the pelvis to drift back in standing forward bends and one-legged standing poses like Virabhadrasana III . This correction brings the leg bones upright and perpendicular to the floor, which better supports the body weight.

Aligning the bones in this manner also has the benefit of increasing joint congruency and spreads the joint reaction forces more evenly across the articular cartilage. Conversely, engaging the muscles that align the bones has been demonstrated to have a protective effect on the joint cartilage.

Hyperextending the knees or elbows in yoga poses can be disadvantageous because it misdirects the forces that create the form of the asana. For example, if the elbows are hyperextending in Adho Mukha Svanasana , then the force of the hands pushing into the mat is angled inward. Ideally, this force should be directed through forearm bones, humerus and shoulders, and then through to the trunk and pelvis.

Symptoms Of A Hyperextended Knee

There are several symptoms that you would recognize for a hyperextended knee and know what it feels like. Most importantly, you will feel or hear a pop that will feel like as if your knee has just gone out of its line. This kind of displacement will be followed by pain in the sides and back of the knee, along with swelling after a few hours of the injury. You will experience difficulty running, playing and doing other such activities.

In severe cases, the person may find difficulty walking too. He or she may experience a twist in his or her steps, and may have imbalance due to which the person may not be able to walk straight. The knee becomes unstable, though the instability is usually not noticed due to swelling in the area.

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Posterior Cruciate Ligament Tears

The PCL crosses over the ACL and prevents forward shifting of the shin bone. The PCL is typically injured by falling and landing directly on the front of the knee joint.

PCL tears can often be treated with nonsurgical treatment when sustained as an isolated injury, but are more commonly treated surgically when combined with other injuries.

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