So what that means is most of your staff are walking around without using the muscles around their knees, particularly at the end of range, (as physio we call it inner range). The way that plays out is that they will walk, "locking the knee out" as they land onto their heel. That way the muscles don't have to do anything. That's Ok short term, but long term they will get weaker and even more inhibited. So knees will continue to degenerate and you will see the evidence in your aging work forces, (computer auto corrected to 'raging' work forces instead of 'aging'...made me laugh!) In reality it's happening to everyone.
The real kicker is that the weakness in inner range is a time bomb for more than just knees because it means your people have no strength from when they come out of straight knee position through to about 15 to 20 degrees of bend. And that is what happens when they trip and fall. It might be the lip of a door, water, a tree root or rock. They hit it and the knee is forced into that slight bend (10-15 degrees) where there is no strength. Most of your people will often have a half give way feel and correct. We've all experienced that at some point.
But..The weaker ones will fall.
And slips, trips and falls make up 24% of serious injuries. So don't let the 9% knee figure lull you into prioritising other injury causes. When you put the two figures together, up to 33% of serious injuries can be related to knees and that's enough to really pull focus.
To change those figures, you can start simple. Keep knees healthy. From your SSTM Injury Prevention toolkit, I have put a quick, super simple "Squeeze, Stretch" technique video for you here. Once you're comfy with that, you can progress to knowing more complex stuff like your trigger strategies. Trigger points around the knee keep it free AND help the muscles fire better, (strength and length are key). Then you can learn how to adjust your walking to deload knees and at some point implement a warm up. The Australian Ballet started specific calf and quad (knee muscle) warm ups a few years ago and decreased ankle strains by over 25%. In a work population that would correlate to trips and falls. All simple to learn and quick to do, you just need to know how.
