Posture from the Patella

To most people walking everyday and always using your feet, knees and hips. Posture issues can spotted by looking at the Patella of the knee. 

A simple Patella can tell us the whole story of your walking gaits, the way you walk, the type of walking style you have, the tightness and weakness of the muscles both agonist, antagonist and synergistic.

Our knees has 4 different ligaments as we all know are the Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), Posterior cruciate ligament (PCL), Medial collateral ligament (MCL) and Lateral collateral ligament (LCL). Thus, with the understanding of how each ligament works to push or pull the patella into different tilts and shifts. We should also know that our patella is shaped in a way where the bottom of the patella is like an angular tip pointing down towards our toes.

Now with that in mind, all you need to do is a simple test to determine how much stretching and strengthening you will need. Simple put both your index fingers to find the sides of the patella to form the triangle which should point either to the right or left more. No one person will have a perfect patella pointing directly down as we all have tightness or laxity in the knees depending on what we do on a daily basis.

With that done, if your fingers are pointing to the right on your right knee. Chances are your left with be pointing outwards to the left as well. This would mean that muscles on the lateral (outer) side of the knees are tight and this could also mean your feet are pointed slightly outwards which could be causing you to have bowed knees.

Also, the same can be seen if both the patellas are pointed medially (inward). This can tell us that you have feet that point inwards and with a high possibility that you have knocked knees.

Therefore, to correct this issues one should stretch the side where patella is pointing towards and strengthen the opposite side with various exercises. This will then balance out the body and if done properly could help to reduce lower back pains, tension and other postural issues. As the entire body has muscles that are linked up to each other.

Correct the root of the problem and it will improve everything else.