This will be a big one simply because of how the knees take a brutal beating in the daily life of a skater, and how many issues could be responsible for experiencing knee pain; especially in skating.
Skating is brutal on the knees and the simple act of bending (knee flexion) and straightening (knee extension) is the basis of everything we will do on a skateboard. Add to this the constant impact taken from bailing from tricks, landing tricks, and even just pushing around, it’s no wonder skaters are always complaining about knee pain.
Example of knee flexion (bending) and knee extension (straightening)
It’s important to note when talking about our knees, so much can effect our perception of pain in the area including the surrounding muscles, tendons and nerves, or even pain being caused from further up and down the chain, such as instability at the feet, hips or torso. A problem in any one of these could give the perception of or lead to pain at the knee. Here’s an example:
Instability at the hip when skating can cause one hip to kick out to the side, placing the knee in a bad position down the chain. This causes irritation at the knee as the ITB is forced to work overtime, correcting the placement of the knee to counterbalance and rectify the lack of stability at the hip.
This is why it is important to look at the bigger picture: When we expand our line of thought to the broader picture of mechanics of, not just the knee but also, the muscles and joints surrounding the knee that have potential to cause irritation, we can understand the system as a whole and the context of the pain relative to the positions and movements expressed on the board.
Another common mistake when dealing with knee pain is finding temporary solutions to immediately get people out of pain, rather than fixing the cause and keeping them out of it. Often, stretching, foam rolling, and mobility work come under these temporary solutions, leading to skaters returning to the board too soon and constantly looking for new pain relief when the pain returns. This can then cap your skating with a limit of potential because, as your skating skills increase, so do the forces being placed on the joints and the muscles that are causing the pain.
So how do we deal with this properly?
Your greatest pain reliever from skate-based pain will be filling the missing pieces of the puzzle: Mobility, stability, and strength. Developing these characteristics of movement can be the key to eliminating pain for good.
Most importantly, building strength off the board allows us to deal with the forces being placed on the knee on the board. This lifts our ceiling for potential whilst minimising off-board training time and allows us to scale up our skills pain-free.
Let’s get started:
This program is split into 3 components:
Mobility – This is how we get you out of pain, restore range of motion at muscles and joints to allow you to move pain-free again.
Stability – This is where we explore these new ranges of motion and create stability in the whole structure; the knee and everything that surrounds and affects it.
Strength – This is where we eliminate knee pain for good. Building strength allows us to tolerate the forces being placed on the knee when we skate so we don’t continue to tighten up.
Your Mobility Program can be performed every day and before your Stability/Strength exercises.
| Order | Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest | Load |
| A1 | Mobility Ball: Hamstrings | 1 | 1-2 mins | – | BW |
| B1 | Foam Roller: ITB | 1 | 1-2 mins | – | BW |
| C1 | Foam Roller: Quads | 1 | 1-2 mins | – | BW |
| D1 | Foam Roller Adductors | 1 | 1-2 mins | – | BW |
| E1 | Couch Stretch | 1 | 1 min | – | BW |
The Stability/Strength focused day can be performed every second day:
- With differences in pain and skill levels it would be impossible to choose a single lunge or hamstring exercise for everyone that would work. As a way around this you are going to use the Skateboard Strength Instagram page and Youtube video to find your variation of each exercise and insert it in the D1, D2 and E1 (Hops) boxes.
Choose 1 of each variation that suits your level and when you can complete the sets and reps given you can then move on to the next challenge in variation.
| Order | Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest | Load |
| A1 | Hip Airplane | 3 | 6 | – | BW |
| B1 | Banded Step Downs | 3 | 10-12 | – | BW |
| C1 | Tib Anterior Raise | 3 | 10-12 | – | BW |
| C2 | Hamstring Curl Pulse | 3 | 20-40 sec hold | – | BW |
| D1 | Choose lunge Variation | 3-4 | 6-10 | 30secs | Loaded |
| D2 | Choose Hamstring Variation | 3-4 | 6-10 | 30secs | Loaded |
| E1 | Choose Hops Variation | 3 | Follow video recommendations | BW |
Full break down of all exercises can be found on the youtube clip here: https://youtu.be/KYYHwJ4NQXc
Find Your Lunge: https://www.instagram.com/p/CUqWw0zBazI/?utm_medium=copy_link
Just remember if you have gotten to the stage where you’re feeling acute knee pain it is most likely due to months or even years of trauma. This didn’t happen overnight and so the solution to get you out of it might not happen overnight either. In the initial stages the more you can perform this program as recommended, the faster you will experience results – so stick with it.
Hopefully this program can now not only provide you a blueprint to relieving your skate-related knee pain, but also keep it away. Lift your ceiling for potential of what you can do on the board without having to constantly be sacrificing your knees and continue skating well in to your latter years.
We cover all these exercises and more taking a full body approach in a skate specific 16 week program fully interactive guide with the SS Fundamentals Program so be sure to check it out here: https://skateboardstrength.com/fundamentals/
