How to Avoid Knee Hyperextension

6 Comments

How to Avoid Knee Hyperextension reviews the mechanics of moving safely in your yoga practice.

Hyperextension occurs when the knee joint extends beyond its normal range of motion. This can occurs when you apply to much weight or pressure on the knee joint. Hyperextension causes soft tissue damage, swelling, and the possibility of tears or strains in the ligaments around the knee joint.

Avoiding knee hyperextension requires mindfulness and body awareness. If you’re a flexible person, you’re likely already hyperextending some of your joints without even noticing it. Your yoga practice is the perfect place to experiment with safely moving within a natural range of motion.

In the How to Avoid Knee Hyperextension tutorial, you’ll learn how to effectively engage your muscles in order to prevent hyperextension in the knees. You’ll also learn alignment principles that help make hyperextension easier to recognize. Finally, you’ll learn to move mindfully through popular standing yoga poses.

Save your knee joints with these mindful adjustments:

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About the Author

Dianne loves celebrating diversity in yoga. With a passion for optimal alignment and therapeutics, Dianne’s journey is one of healing, growth and sharing. Dianne is an E-RYT 500 with Yoga Alliance, has had extensive yoga therapy training, is a columnist for the Elephant Journal, owns a studio, runs yoga retreats, trains yoga teachers, has a husband, two small boys and not enough sleep. See all of Dianne Bondy's Yogasteya content here

6 responses to “How to Avoid Knee Hyperextension”

1. This video was just what I needed. I have a torn meniscus and arthritis in my right knee which I know are exacerbated due to hyper-extending my joints. I now want to carry around my block to keep myself corrected, it felt so good.
   Thank you Dianne.

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   • Awesome! This makes me so happy that you found this video helpful.Thanks so much for the feedback.

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2. I have been doing yoga for years and teaching for a year. I totally get what doing these things feels like in my body and have pretty much always done it ( possibly because I have had so many great teachers!) but I have been struggling with explaining it to beginning students–“engage your muscles” seems way to vague to many of them. I have also used “hug your muscles to your bones” which seems to work a bit better. I LOVE the squeeze the block idea to give them direct experience with it then we can connect it to the quick cues. Also like “drawing toward the midline.” Thanks for Another great video!

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   • Laura Rose thank you! I am glad you found the video helpful. These were great cues I learned from my Anusara teaching days. I found that it helped my students to connect with the actions a little more fully. I am happy you found this useful

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3. Thank you for this video. I wish I’d had it years ago when I first hyper extended my right knee. I’ve had trouble with it ever since and no one has offered an explanation or a way to lessen the strain on it while doing yoga or other exercises. Thanks for the squeeze the block demonstration. I will try it.

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   • Iris! I hear you! Years of sore knees as a chronic hyper extender has made me rethink my yoga practice. Let me know if this works for you. Thanks for the comment

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