Knee Meniscus Tear Tests and Exercises for Full Recovery

yo what's up it's Eric Wong here from Precision Movement and today we're gonna talk about the meniscus and how to recover from a knee meniscus tear so I'm actually dealing with a Nima's meniscus tear right now myself I got mine at the time of shooting this video about two and a half months ago and I would say I'm about 90 to 95% to being 100% okay and we're gonna talk about exactly how to diagnose it with three different tests as well as four exercises to help you get to full recovery now these aren't all the exercises that you're you're gonna need and it depends on what sport you do but these exercises will help to restore the core functions of the knee and to ensure that you have the movement and mobility that's required to keep a meniscus healthy for the long term okay so I got my meniscus injury and I've injured the medial meniscus because I was doing some exercises experimenting with some exercises and I got a little too aggressive and after there's some rotational stuff of the knee some deep squat crawling so then he was in full flexion and I had to be rotational on got my meniscus tear and right away the first few days it was very very stiff okay now one way to differentiate between a joint or a connective tissue injury and a muscular strain is simply just do isometrics and activate the different muscles activate quads hamstrings calves adductors whatever muscles that you suspect might be involved do a strong isometric contraction and if there's no extra pain or if there's just a little bit more pain then it's likely that you've got a connective tissue injury and not a muscular strength okay because if you've got a muscular strain and you do a strong isometric contraction of that muscle you're gonna feel it okay so that's one quick way to differentiate between muscular strain and connective tissue like meniscus injury yep so let's go through go through three tests for the meniscus specifically so the first test is just palpation there's gonna touch the joint line so find your knee and touch right in the medial aspect here and just kind of add some pressure and if you've got some tenderness going on somewhere in this area you might have a meniscus injury same with the lateral line you can just kind of palpate and rub right along the knee joint there and if you've got some tenderness suspected meniscus so that's the first test you can do just kind of get a general idea next up we're gonna go and do some open chain tibial rotation so the tibia can rotate externally so when the knee is flexed only not when it's extended when the knee is flexed you can rotate the tibial tibia externally and internally okay so here to test your meniscus first you want to go to lift the leg up and then actively bring your knee to flexion into flexion so if you've got an injury you're gonna be limited and you're gonna maybe hit an area like oh right there is where I have pain so at that area you want to go into external rotation and internal rotation and one of those directions is likely going to increase your level of pain if it's external rotation that increases your level of pain that's your medial meniscus if it's internal rotation that's your lateral meniscus okay so here now we've got a little more information on what tissue exactly is painful so again active knee flexion to the point of pain once you're there go to external rotation external tibial rotation that's gonna be medial meniscus and then internal rotation that's going to test your lateral meniscus and you can add a little more flexion just to increase the pain there okay so that's going to tell you okay lateral medial meniscus figure out what shit is then we'll know what we've got a target well we don't even have to target anything we still want to restore full function of the joint regardless of if you have lateral or medial yeah just something to look out for final test will go through is simple one knee extension full knee extension so straighten your knee and if you cannot achieve full knee extension what that's indicative of is you might have what's called no one has a bucket handle tear of the meniscus and that's when basically the meniscus there's a rip right in the middle and it's like you could like the handle of a bucket yep what's showing here is that the flap might have folded over and now it's lit basically like say the meniscus is normally like this flat folds over itself you cannot go to a full extension pulling the extension anymore because the compression is gonna happen and you won't be able to straighten through otherwise you'd be really squeezing that tissue hard and that would cause just too much pain so if you cannot achieve full in the extension you might have a flap that's kind of folded over and something that happens with that issue is a lot of times it might just go away on its own the flap might just restore itself one way to facilitate that is with a little bit of traction okay so with this we just loop a band around your ankle lie down and have to bend pulling that way that's just gonna decompress the joints a little bit and it might allow that meniscus flap to go back and lay flat okay so it's not folded over alright so there you have a few different tests to figure out a is it my meniscus and B what kind of meniscus tear do I have whether it's medial lateral bucket handle just gives you a little bit more inferring information but regardless the treatment is gonna be pretty much the same now there's a study out in 2013 in the New England Journal of Medicine that tested physiotherapy versus surgery okay they had two groups and there was like 350 patients two groups and split them in half sent them into either physio or surgery and what they found is that six months the pain outcomes and functional outcomes we're pretty much the same between both groups now that's very important to note however what they found is at the six-month point thirty percent of the people who started in the physical therapy group moved over to the surgery group okay so basically what this means is it's probably a good idea just to start with exercise and if you're going for six months and you find either the pain is maintaining staying the same or it's getting worse then surgery might be a good idea yeah I'm not against surgery at all I just think that a lot of times that's prescribed too early where we could try these more conservative op op treatment options and find the same level of success so my suggestion is start with exercise give it a good go at least three months but up to six months and then make your decision if you want to go into surgery at that point okay so if you don't want to go into surgery and you want to do some exercises let's do that right now so the first technique should stay down call it open chain of tibial rotation isometrics so what you're going to do is yeah you've got a sore meniscus you're gonna find the end active range okay so let's say this is my end active range and any more than that I get pain okay so end active range you want to back off just a little bit from there and all we're gonna do is internal a nice external isometric so from here you're gonna go to external rotation and you're gonna keep externally rotating for five seconds hold it and then you're gonna go into the internal rotation and hold it for five seconds and you can do three repetitions of either of those okay what this is doing is we're firing up the muscles that obviously create external and internal rotation so this is going to help to facilitate blood flow in the area which is going to facilitate healing because if you're not moving and you're not creating the forces that need to go through the knee for it to be healthy you're not going to bring in the forces that are needed strengthen that tissue so the meniscus is just like ligaments it's just like tendons just like muscles your response to force and when you load it through in this case external and internal rotation you're creating those forces and that's going to stimulate recovery yeah it's user to lose it if you're never loading it your body's not going to adapt and make that tissue stronger all right so that's the first one I just want to do three repetitions hold your five seconds in either direction think of it as kind of a warm-up and a restoration and activation of this movement pattern and of these muscles okay next up simple squats two painless end range doing 10 10 repetitions however you normally squat like if you're if you do back squats or front squats in the gym whatever your stance is do the same stance this is kind of as a guide to where you're at okay because your range of motion is going to tell you if you're progressing or not so if you can normally just get down to there before you feel pain then after a week or two weeks you should be able to get a little bit lower each time okay so ten repetitions just squat the end range and like I said I'm about two and a half months in and I can start to feel it right about there okay so pretty good all right so that is the second exercise third exercise hip bridges with ankle plants here in dorsiflexion so there's a couple key points here I'm gonna lie down in the supine position okay and I want first thing to set up that's actively go into knee flexion and then once you feel the pain back off of that range a little bit okay so just get out of the painful end range so all these exercises we shouldn't be going into pain repeatedly and trying to force our way through it but we just work just before pain is elicited and we're still gonna build strength beyond that range and this will help again to facilitate recovery blood flow build strength and progressively build strength throughout the full range okay so here you're gonna hip bridge first activation is just squeeze the glutes fire them up bridge up and then from here maintain the position of the pelvis and the spine and you're just gonna go into plantar flexion so lift the heels off the ground by activating the calves and then slowly into dorsiflexion ya plantar flexion breathe hold just a couple second old and dorsiflexion okay so this you're gonna do anywhere from four to six cycles of the planter in dorsiflexion and then do three repetitions of that okay what this is doing is a lot of the exercises that we do are gonna build the knees from above so quads hamstrings those muscles this exercise helps to build the knee stability from below okay the calves tibia to Vialis anterior okay so this way we're hitting all of the muscle groups needed to keep the knee healthy okay so that's the hip bridge with ankle planter and dorsiflexion three repetitions with four to six cycles between ankle planter and dorsiflexion now the last exercise that we're gonna do you've got to be really conservative with I call this one leg tibial rotation squat okay so this one you want to go really slow and controlled do not go into this with momentum or with speed otherwise you're gonna injure yourself but if you do this properly you're gonna strengthen exactly what you need to strengthen to keep the knee healthy okay so you're gonna load up one leg so working on my left knee here and all I'm gonna do is I'm gonna squat down keeping the weight on my heel and the ball my foot especially underneath the big toe okay the weight is evenly distributed there and I'm just gonna squat down and drive the knee outside of my foot to the left but make sure you plant the ball of the foot the foots gonna want to lift up like that I want to plant the foot pressure on the foot on the ball and the heel and then I'm pushing myself up through this leg okay from there I'm gonna go tibial external rotation so the knee goes the inside you can see how it's as if the tibia externally rotated that way same thing squat this time keep the feet flat but a little more pressure on the outside ball of the foot so the pinky toe okay and heel foot stays flat just go slow painless and range and then drive yourself back up using these muscles okay this is just here for balance my right leg so again drive the knee to the outside of the foot think of pushing the ball of the foot down keeping the heel flat on the ground and then push up through the painless end range and then on the inside of the foot think of pushing through the pinky toe metatarsal and keep the weight on the heel here okay and you want to do about six repetitions of either going slow and under control think of with that map I call it the movement and/or activation pattern that I described and that's gonna build up the stability of the whole lower limb from the foot up to the hip yeah so it's gonna integrate that all and what you'll find is as you do these exercises I recommend you do them on a daily basis it's not a lot it's gonna once you get them down it's gonna take you about five minutes to do but this is going to simultaneously speed healing build strength and stability and it's gonna ensure that you're increasing the mobility the range that is needed okay because if you don't have good rotation of the tibia then any time you get into that whether it's a sport or training whenever you're forced there you're going to hit and range very quickly and that's where you can damage the tissue okay so those are four exercises to get you on the path to the full recovery if you're just doing extensions and hamstring curls you're gonna heal the minister is just gonna heal over time but you're not building that all-important rotational mobility of the knee that is critical for meniscus injuries yeah you've got to restore that so there you have it tests and exercises for full medial or full meniscus recovery and whether it's medial or lateral it doesn't matter okay if it's medial in my case you're just gonna hurt a little bit more whenever you do tibial external rotation techniques so turning the foot out or when you're squatting the knee going inside the foot yeah and vice-versa for lateral the pain is gonna increase a little bit sooner but you're always working the painless end range anyway so it doesn't matter and these techniques apply to both conditions alright so this is these are just four exercises now I've got a complete course called lower limb control that works everything restores full function and takes you from basic techniques some of which we showed here to more advanced techniques where you're actually getting into some ballistics and some jumping some plyometric type techniques okay and that's important to train as well because if we're jumping we're running in real life and we got to rehabilitate ourselves using those techniques so we don't continue to reenter ourselves and continue to stress those tissues so check that out you go to precision movement coach forward slash and lower - Liam - control put a link down there - expect you to remember that in the description and at the end of the video if you want to ensure that your whole lower limb is functioning properly to prevent injury and heal any problems that you're having right now ok so thanks again for checking this video out I'll see you next time peace you

Channel: Precision Movement

Views: 1,159,295

Rating: 4.909802 out of 5

Keywords: meniscus tear symptoms, meniscus symptoms, meniscus tear test, meniscus tear, medial meniscus tear, meniscus, rehab, flexibility, mobility, exercises, routines, fitness, movement, knee, knee pain, knee injury, meniscus injury, meniscus injury symptoms, meniscus rehab, meniscus tear recovery, meniscus tear exercises, knee recovery, meniscus exercises, torn meniscus symptoms, torn meniscus recovery, meniscal tear, meniscal tear symptoms

Id: 5Hf4_1VMzLk

Length: 17min 23sec (1043 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 25 2018