Is swimming good for your knees?

I believe everyone is familiar with swimming. It is a very popular sport. It can effectively improve the body's cardiopulmonary function. Swimming can exercise all the muscles in the body and shape a very good body shape. Many people still have a question: whether swimming is good for the human knees. So let’s take a detailed look at whether swimming is good for the knees.

For ordinary people, swimming is the best exercise for joints. It is recommended that you participate in more swimming exercises because the human body is parallel to the ground in water, and the joints are basically not weight-bearing. For the heart, the gravity is also the smallest, which is also good for the heart.

However, for swimmers, always swimming can be bad for the knees. Eversion and squeezing are both movements that go against the structure of the human knee. The more you want to increase your speed, the more you have to bend your knee structure to move. Over time or with high intensity, it will cause varying degrees of damage to the knee.

Knee pain and knee injuries are common among breaststroke athletes. When the legs do the breaststroke eversion and kick-off movements, the medial collateral ligament and medial meniscus of the knee are under great stress. When an athlete's calf performs eversion, the femoral head presses inward and the tibial head pulls outward on the medial collateral ligament and medial meniscus. Ligaments are often torn when excessive force is applied. At the same time, the meniscus is squeezed at the site of the torn ligament. These areas often become inflamed (chronic inflammation of the medial collateral ligament of the knee and meniscus inflammation of the knee), causing pain when kicking your legs during breaststroke.

All strenuous exercise on hard surfaces, such as squats, frog jumps, running, skipping rope and dancing, will increase wear and tear on the knee joints. Especially when squatting down and then standing up, the knee joints are subject to the greatest wear and tear. When squatting, the pressure on the knee joint is 8-10 times the body's own weight. The function of articular cartilage is to cushion the force on the joint. It is equivalent to rubber on a runway, which can help cushion the stress on the body and thus protect our joints. If you exercise on a hard floor, the articular cartilage will bounce back under the extremely strong reaction force, causing considerable damage to the knee joint and bones. Therefore, it is recommended to play sports only on rubber sports surfaces.