5 Surprising Facts About Your Knees

Here are 5 surprising facts about your knees that I bet you didn’t know!

1. Your knees are two of the most stressed joints in your body. For every pound you weigh, your knees receive four times the amount of stress. So if you’re overweight, losing weight is super important to protect your knees, especially if you have osteoarthritis.

2. Knees are two of the most complicated joints in the body. The knee joint is composed of the femur (thigh bone), patella (knee cap), and the tibia (the shin bone). All these bones are kept in place by various tendons and ligaments cushioned by cartilage.

3. Knees rely on 10 muscles to function. Knees rely on various groups of muscles to function including the quadriceps, the hamstrings, hip abductors, glute muscles, and calf muscles which all work together to stabilize the knee joint. Strengthening all these muscles that support the knee joint is important to prevent and or manage knee pain.

4. Wearing the right shoes is important to protect the knees. Wearing shoes that don’t adequately support the feet or put the knees in compromising positions (like high heels!) can increase pressure on the knees, resulting in damage to the knees and knee pain. I talk a lot about this here: Do you love your feet?

5. Babies are born without kneecaps. When babies are born, they have no kneecaps but instead, their knees are made out of cartilage. They develop knee cap bones between two and six years old. This makes the birthing process easier.

Yoga is one of the best ways to keep your knees strong and healthy!

Yoga gently strengthens and stretches all these muscles which support your knee joints.

Here’s a gentle yoga sequence to help you strengthen your knees.

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I’m Karin, a certified yoga teacher based in Kingston, Jamaica.

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