Navigating knee injuries? Your guide to understanding knee braces awaits. ▶️Those who don’t know about knee braces, come and read‼ ️The experience summarized from using more than 50 knee braces is mainly shared in 4 parts:
The role of knee braces:
A knee brace acts like protective armor, significantly lessening the impact on your knee during physical activities, which helps keep the joint healthier and more stable.
These braces also improve blood flow in the knee, which helps get rid of metabolic waste and can relieve pain and stiffness.
After an injury or surgery, wearing a knee brace can really help speed up your recovery. It applies external pressure to the knee and provides space for tissue repair for soft tissue.
Choice of knee braces:
Like meniscus injury, ligament strain, and patellar dislocation, it is necessary to choose strong wrapping and knee braces with support on both sides, because only with a good wrapping feeling can pressure be applied inward to tighten the leg muscles and help share the body’s squeeze on the soft tissues in the joints. The support strips on both sides can also simulate the force of the ligaments to give the ligaments space to recover.
When playing basketball, tennis, badminton, and football, the knees will bend and rotate a lot. To help prevent injuries, go for a lightweight, breathable, and supportive knee brace. This type of brace effectively limits joint movement and reduces the strain and wear on soft tissues during your workouts.
When you're hiking, especially downhill, it's common for your knees to feel sore and weak. At this time, choosing a supported open knee pad is equivalent to installing two crutches on the knees. It is easy to wear and has both protective and breathable properties.
Advantages and disadvantages of knee pads
✅ If the meniscus is injured, the patella is dislocated, the medial and lateral collateral ligaments, the anterior and posterior cruciate ligaments, and the knee has effusion, wearing a suitable knee pad can avoid secondary injury and will not affect the performance of daily sports.
❎ Choosing the wrong knee pad or wearing it in the wrong way will aggravate the degree of knee injury and make the location of the injury more and more serious.
Preparation:
Before you plan to wear a knee pad, you should pay attention to the condition of the knee area. Make sure your knee is clean and fresh, without sweat or other secretions. Because only in this way can the knee pad fit our skin completely and truly play its role. At the same time, don't forget to carefully check whether the knee pad is damaged or deformed. If you find that there is a problem with the knee pad, you must replace it with a new one. Otherwise, the knee joint will not be subjected to uniform external pressure, and it will not have the proper protective effect when worn, and it will also affect the health of the knee.
Wearing steps:
If you are wearing a sleeve-type knee pad, first put your feet in through the opening of the knee pad, and then slowly pull the knee pad up until the knee pad can be firmly covered in the right place above the knee. This appropriate position is to make the center of the knee pad face the kneecap. It's like wearing a specially customized small hat for your knee, and it has to be worn correctly. Then remember to judge whether the tightness of the knee brace is suitable for you. The knee brace should provide enough support and pressure to the knee, but not too tight, otherwise it will affect blood circulation. Poor blood circulation will be troublesome. Tips for judging tightness: just enough to insert a finger.
If you wear a knee brace with a support strip or strap, the first step is to put the knee brace in the correct position on the knee. Then follow the instructions in the product manual to fasten the strap or adjust the position of the support strip step by step. Usually, the strap is tied or the support strip is fixed from below the knee, and then slowly moved up. This is like building a house and laying a foundation first. Starting from the bottom can make the knee brace fit the knee more firmly. When tying the strap or adjusting the support strip, you must pay special attention to ensure that the support strip is in the right place on both sides of the knee. Only in this way can the support strip play the same role as the ligament in our knee, providing stable support for the knee, so that the knee will not fall to the ground during exercise.
