Strong quads are essential for almost any athletic movement — running, jumping and lunging all depend on sturdy quadriceps muscles for explosiveness and stability. Train the vastus medialis to maximize athletic potential! Nearly all of us would prefer to have sculpted, toned legs.
While physical appearance largely depends on our dietary choices, we can also build muscle in our legs to improve the appearance of our lower half. In this position, your left knee should be directly over your left ankle.
Feel free to alternate legs or complete one side at a time. The 1-legged bench squat places an intense stress on the vastus medialis — this exercise depends upon stability and balance.
Explosive squat jumps recruit the quick twitch muscles in the quads, especially the vastus medialis. If you clench your thigh muscles, vastus medialis forms a bulge on the inner thigh, often referred to as the tear drop muscle.
This part of the muscle is known as vastus medialis oblique, aka VMO or vastus medialis obliquus, as the muscle fibres here pass obliquely into the kneecap.
The vastus medialis muscle as a whole works with the other quadriceps muscles to straighten the knee and thus extend the leg. Vastus medialis is particularly important in the final stages of knee extension where it helps with the locking mechanism of the knee joint. The vastus medialis oblique VMO portion on the muscle has an extra function of helping to control how the kneecap moves and provides stability. The shape of the knee means that naturally the kneecap would glide slightly over to the outer side of the knee when bending the leg.
This would place excessive friction through the cartilage lining the back of the kneecap as well as increasing the risk of patella dislocation.
However, the positioning and direction of the VMO muscle fibres help to counteract this by drawing the kneecap inwards, or medially. This ensures that as the knee bends and straightens, the kneecap glides smoothly up and down the groove on the thigh bone so there is no friction on the back of the kneecap. But, you do want to make sure that VMO is activating properly.
Clenching a squashy ball between your knees as you do vastus medialis exercises really helps to make sure the VMO is switching on. Test both sides together, particularly if you have knee pain or swelling, as you may well notice a difference between sides.
Hold for 30 seconds and repeat 3 times. For more top tips on stretching, visit the knee stretches section. Once you can do 30 reps of each of these vastus medialis exercises with good control and are feeling confident that you are activating your VMO, you can progress onto more advanced exercises such as lunges, step ups and step downs without needing the ball.
Influence of age will play a role on muscle development. Fortunately, Progressive resistance training is a way of slowing down this process. If this is something that is concerning you, I would seek further clarification in a clinical setting with GP, Neurologist or Physiotherapist.
The key importance to remember is that strength increase can be achieved within a few weeks, but muscle growth will take a longer period of time. I highly recommend seeking a physiotherapist or exercise physiologist to develop your initial exercise program, so that you are performing adequate and appropriate strength exercises tailored to your needs. Regards, Patrick. Thank you Patrick for your comments. I train for Spartan races by running both on both flat and mountain terrain between 5 and 15 miles.
I build up week by week to attain the longer distances. On occasion I get a pain in my VMO. It may occur on one side at a time or in both. The pain does not feel like a cramp as I have experienced in my calves or feet pain and locking up.
It seems to happen if I extend my self to far when I add miles on my run compared to previous distances. My question is it simply muscle fatigue?
Why do my other muscles not experience this issue? I have not had any knee issues so I do not believe that is an underlying issue? If it is not fatigue is there something else it could be? I will start performing your exercises listed above. Thanks again. Hi Todd, Thank you for your comment. Anterior knee pain is unfortunately a common symptom experienced in casual and experienced runners.
From your detailed explanation, there are 3 things that may be influencing your knee pain. Strengthening exercises will assist with improving running efficiency and muscular performance. A minimum of weeks of resistance based exercise is required to achieve this performance goal. You can perform these exercises as an adjunct, concurrently with your running training. The change of gradient has a significant impact on muscular usage. An article in shows that both incline and decline gradients have a significant increase in Quadriceps muscular activity.
Similar to the reason above, I believe a strengthening program of the lower limb will assist with this. Finally, an alternative cause of your symptoms may be the patellofemoral joint Kneecap and Femur.
The patellofemoral joint pain is the most common cause of anterior knee pain, particularly in runners. Therefore a thorough knee assessment is often required to assess the root cause of the issue.
Hoping this helps with your question Todd, by the sounds of things you are going about your goal of Spartan Running the right way, being consistent with gradual progressive loading. Lower limb strengthening will provide you with improved running efficiency and performance, although I recommend that you consider the whole leg with your strength program.
Also some additional reading from Physio Campbell, where he discusses lower limb strength exercises — with examples of exercises, over a 3 part series. If you are a Sydney Local, you should pop into one of our 4 CBD clinics for an assessment of your knee pain, so that we can keep you achieving your goals painfree.
Thanks Patrick. Hi Mark My name is Siraj from South Africa,I injured my knee back in while landing from a jump and my knee sort of bent outwards. Sometimes it feels like my right leg is doing all the work and it also has more muscle mass.
A comprehensive assessment by an experienced physio local to you, or an orthopaedic surgeon with a special interest in knees, will assess what needs most attention right now.
These should be found with a full physical assessment as well as a comprehensive history taking of your knee. Fatigue around your knee and pain just below your patella can certainly be caused by a patellofemoral joint kneecap joint problem but there are other pathologies that need to be ruled out before devising a management plan otherwise your rehab will be ineffective no matter how well or often you do your exercises.
I hope this helps Siraj.
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