The key to getting rid of knee pain is knowing why you get it

You're familiar with the endless ‘chicken and egg’ debate aren't you: “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”

There's no answer to that: before every egg there came a chicken and before every chicken there was an egg.

The same ‘chicken and egg’ principle applies to knee pain:–
Does stiffness cause knee pain?
Or does knee pain cause stiffness?

Clearly, both statements are true:–
Stiffness does cause pain.
And pain does cause stiffness.

Kind of obvious really, isn't it?…

Okay, I confess. I've been leading you astray. It may be obvious that stiffness causes pain
…but it isn't true.

Stiffness does not cause pain

Holding on to stiffness, preventing stretching, is what causes pain.

Every time you move or stretch out a stiff knee, if you do it with the fear that it will hurt, you hold on to it.

Now, your body is always stretching because that's how it works. Meanwhile there you are holding on to it for fear of pain. You're at loggerheads with your body.

While you're alive, your body will keep stretching. While you're afraid to let it stretch, you'll always have pain. The end result is you sitting on the sofa and squirming in pain.

So what's the solution?

The solution is to recognise what's happening and stop fighting your body's attempts to sort you out.

You want to relax.

Your body wants Lazy Tension

…and, really, your body knows best.

Let's see if we can understand what's going on a little better.

All good movement and posture is a demonstration of Lazy Tension.
All poor movement and posture is a demonstration of stiffness and relaxation.

“Stiffness AND relaxation”?

“Surely stiffness and relaxation are opposites”?

That's what most people think but they are not opposites. They are in fact just the two faces of the same coin: the coin of unnecessary shortening. This unnecessary shortening causes you to lose your springiness. The resulting shortened, unsprung state is best described as ‘unstretching’.

Stiffness is about holding on to your body, freezing. You shorten and lose your springiness.
That's one kind of unstretching.

Relaxation is about letting go, collapsing. Again, you shorten and lose your springiness.
That's another kind of unstretching.

Both are contrary to what your body needs. That's really why both cause pain.

Relaxed and unstretched, your body is like an archery bow forced into a too-bent position so the bow-string is left slack. Just as there's no tautness to power the arrow's movement there's now no tautness to power your movement.

Stiff and unstretched, your body is like a bow with the bendy part replaced by solid concrete. The bow-string may be just as tight as before but try shooting an arrow with such a bow. How far do you think that arrow will fly? A few feet at most.

So stiffness and relaxation are just two kinds of unstretching.

Lazy Tension is the opposite of both stiffness and relaxation

…because Lazy Tension is the opposite of unstretching. It's the state of being stretched, taut and springy, like the tightly-strung bow.

When you're not used to it, Lazy Tension is hard work. Once you are used to it, Lazy Tension becomes easy — positively lazy, in fact.

For example, think of a tiger on the prowl. The tiger is ready for sudden action at any moment but do you see any effort there? No, that tiger isn't putting any effort whatsoever into its alert ready-for-anything-ness.

The tiger has no pain anywhere in its body and neither will you if you learn to move with Lazy Tension.

So how do I learn Lazy Tension?

You learn Lazy Tension by allowing your body to stretch out of its painful, unstretched state. Your body still knows how to stretch, you don't have to teach it that. You do need to learn how to allow it to get on with the job.

How do you do that? You can find detailed instructions in this earlier article: How to be "in the zone" when working at your desk

This earlier article explains how to get ‘in the zone’ while sitting working at a desk. This ‘being in the zone’ is precisely the state of Lazy Tension that I describe here. It's what we need in order to get out of pain. The same method that I described in that article for when you're working at a desk applies equally well to any sitting activity.

For other activities such as standing, kneeling, bending, squatting, walking, going downstairs, running, singing and dancing the method will be slightly different but the principle of Lazy Tension is exactly the same.

In future articles, I will show you how to apply Lazy Tension to these other activities and so get rid of the knee pain while doing them. Lazy Tension enables you to do literally anything without getting knee pain.

So break the chicken and egg syndrome. Let your knees be even tenser than they already are.

…because that way lies freedom from both stiffness and pain.

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