Healthy Knee Blue Print
Part 1- Soft-Tissue Quality


By Josh Luck


One of the most devastating injuries in football is a knee injury. It is in any sport for that matter. It is also one of the most common. Having in-season and off-season success means having fail-proof knees. Do you know how well your knees are holding up? Do you know how to take care of them? Let’s take a moment and determine some factors that may be affecting your knees and your ability to perform at your best.

How good is your soft-tissue quality? Tissue quality is vital for knee health and function. Soft-tissue is based not only on the muscle itself, but also, tendons and ligaments. It is very important to release things like trigger points, scar tissue and adhesions from the tissue that we develop through a lot of aspects such as, over training, surgery, and even common injuries. Being that football is a contact sport; we can create a lot of trauma to soft-tissue health, so we must take the time to take care of it. The focus here is on self-myofascial release (SMR) techniques.

One of the best SMR techniques is foam rolling. If you have never used a foam roller before, I warn you. The sensitivity can be very disturbing. It hurts! Especially if you’re soft-tissue quality is poor.

Since we are talking about the knees here, these areas are of focus:

Calves





- Start by placing roller mid-calf and lift hips off the ground. Pull hips back and fourth, rolling calf over roller from back of knee to top of the ankle. Rotate leg in and out to trigger entire calf musculature.

Peroneals





- Start by placing roller on the side of the calves and support your body on your inside forearm. Roll from the top of the calf to the top of the ankle on the sides.

TFL/ITB





- Place roller in the pocket of the hip and roll down the side of the leg using the forearm for support. Top leg can be bent with the foot flat on the floor for more support and less pressure on the side of the leg if it is too much.

Quads





- Lying face down, place roller on the top of your quads, and roll down the leg toward the knee.

Hip Flexors





- Place roller right in the crease of your hip, and with a small rocking motion of the roller, rock back and forth in the hip flexors.

Gluteals





- Start by sitting directly on top of the roller. Place hands behind you on the floor. Bend your knees up so direct pressure is placed down on the roller through the glutes. Pull hips back and forth while rolling from the top of the glutes all the way to the bottom.

Piriformis





- Start by sitting directly on top of the roller. Bring one leg up and place ankle over the knee of the opposite leg. Rotate hips over to the exposed hip of the leg that is up. Roll over roller in the pocket of the hip and find any “hot spots” within the area.

I suggest implementing foam rolling at least 3 times a week with your program. Those with poor tissue quality should integrate rolling even more throughout the week. Trigger points will return if you don't stretch, and strengthen the muscle after it has been released. The most effective method for Foam rolling is to release any trigger points or adhesions and train it in that state, and recheck before training that muscle again.


Josh Luck is the creator and founder of Elitefootballtrianing.com and has been training athletes for over a decade from all levels of performance. For more information on football conditioning and program design, visit http://www.elitefootballtraining.com or email coach Luck at: coachluck@elitefootballtraining.com