Sleeping. This is part two of the breakdown of how we sleep. Last week we went over the ankles. This week we will discuss the knees.
What are your knees doing when you sleep?
This one is particularly important for side sleepers. Take a look at your knees. Is it bent? Are the knees touching each other? How high up are the hips? Based on the answers, your hip flexors, lower back, and knees could be tight.
First, if the knees are tucked in high to the point that it is parallel to the hips, your hip flexors are on. That’s 8 hours of activating the hip flexors. The consequence of this will result in tight hip flexors and tilting your hips forward (called anterior pelvic tilt). So when you squat, you’ll notice immediate tightness and you won’t be able to go down as low. In order to correct this, make sure your knees are not as high as your hips.
Secondly, is the knees touching each other? Or like in the featured image, is the top leg overlapping? The consequence of this would be tight groin muscles. If you take a look at your knees, there’s not much muscle on the inside. So it’s pretty much bone on bone hitting each other for 8 hours. The way to combat this is to place a pillow in between the knees. This will help you from rolling and the knees hitting each other. Also, this places the hip in a resting position and turning the groin muscles off.
To summarize, making sure the knees are not as high as the hips and placing a pillow in between the knees will help relax the body more. However, it takes time to adjust to these things so take your time with it. Give it a shot and see how the body reacts! Hope you enjoyed this week’s blog. Stay tuned for more next Wed………………Kei