Aching knees can make it challenging to work out or to go about your daily business. What you wear significantly impacts how well you recover from a workout or injury. Will compression pants help aching knees? Yes, they will. These types of garments reduce the soreness and pain that come with training. Compression pants reduce muscle pain and inflammation. They improve the performance and endurance of players. Compression pants and tights are the new trends in the functional fit kit, known for several health benefits for muscle pains and knee recovery.
People who have suffered knee injuries in the past can use compression apparel to provide relief of joint pain and to prevent more injuries. Compression pants help during physical activity to give additional support to the knee or to help with recovery post-workout.
Pros and Cons of Wearing Compression Pants to Stop Knee Pain
Pros of wearing compression pants to heal knee pain
They help reduce vibrations: Using compression pants for knee pain helps in reducing the vibrations during your steps. These vibrations could lead to soreness and fatigue. This is why compression pants are necessary to keep the muscles in place to minimize pain and body stiffness.
Will compression pants help aching knees? Absolutely, reducing vibrations is a big way they do so.
They help in the reduction of lactic acid: Compression pants use a graduated tightness, which appears to be more snug around the foot and ankle, and it becomes less tight gradually towards your core. It is this graduated compression that helps the body to move the depleted blood back to the heart. This hinders the lactic acid from building up in the blood and muscles to extreme levels. As such, compression pants work by improving blood circulation during exercise, thus reducing the time needed for recovery.
They help in temperature regulation: It can be challenging for muscles to recover,especially with transitions between hot and cold temperatures and vice versa. Knee pain in extreme heat can cause muscle cramps. In cold weather your muscles contract and tighten up, making it more painful for your knees.
Compression pants also keep the muscles warm. They prevent muscle strain, and promote increased muscle output due to its elastic and supportive fabric.
Cons
Compression pants are suitable for all the above reasons. However they are most helpful for pain management in people who are already arthritic. As such, compression pants or tights are only beneficial when worn for long periods and not only during physical activity. Compression pants, for all their muscle oxygenation intentions, can leave you breathless because they are tight. Wearing these garments can can feel uncomfortable as an additional layer. They might limit airflow in your body.
When Do Compression Pants Help You Heal Quicker?
Compression pants or tights help in recovery and knee pains after a training session or a match. Compression pants help aching knees after training. For people with highly congested schedules such as athletes, it can be challenging to find time to recover between fixtures. Compression pants are priceless during long hours of travel from a match. As such, it is vital to develop a strong strategy for the recovery of knee pain using compression.
Compression pants for knee pain can work while sleeping, and a study has shown, it gives your muscle strength a 10 percent improvement, a day after exercising. According to research, using compression pants while sleeping impacts muscle recovery significantly, and ultimately helps with knee pains. There are people, however, who feel a bit sluggish the next day as a result of prolonged compression, so it is crucial to test out if this works for you.
Compression pants can also be used during travel to help speed up recovery and ease knee pains. People who use compression pants when traveling, especially players before and after a match, tend to have improved physical performance compared to those who don’t use these garments.
According to research, compression pants have been used to improve proprioception or body awareness. This, in turn, prevents faulty movements of the body by enhancing the connection between your mind and your body, thus preventing swelling, reducing soreness, and improving blood circulation. You don’t have to wear compression pants all the time. They are most beneficial to those who are jumping, running, or doing other knee centric activities such as squats and weight lifting.
In Which Cases are Compression Pants Useless for Knee Pain?
A knee joint is one of the strongest and largest joints in the human body, which is why it is said to be the most complicated and most prone to wear and tear. Compression pants help with knee pains by retaining heat, which keeps the knee joint warm; thus, you feel less pain and discomfort. Compression pants are useless for knee pain when the injury is on the patella and the anterior knee, in which case you will need a knee brace instead of a compression sleeve.
The Mechanisms By Which Compression Pants Help Heal Your Knees
Individuals have been using compression garments to alleviate their knee pains as well as speed up their recoveries. Well designed compression pants help with knee pain.
This can be explained better using the science of compression. Let’s understand the mechanisms through which compression pants or garments help heal knee pain. When you have had a long and intense workout, your body produces lactic acid. Your body’s oxygen levels are not enough to support the body’s exercise-related functions.
The body naturally eliminates this lactic acid through the blood flowing through your muscles and to your heart. During long and intense workouts, the amount of lactic acid your body produces exceeds what your muscles can deal with. Thus, the body muscles’ ability to contract well is interfered with, resulting in leg and knee pains. Hence, compression garments come in handy.
Compression pants help improve the removal of lactic acid by improving blood flow from the muscles to the heart. You can work longer and more intensely without lactic acid in the blood. Compression squeezes down on your legs and minimizes the oscillations that go through your muscles with each step. Essentially, a compression garment functions the same as a knee sleeve. Knee sleeves help knee pain by compressing the joint so that blood can flood to the intended area.
Knee issues are a common problem facing athletes and other recreational sports enthusiasts, regardless of whether it is a current injury or a preventive measure for an injury. Such knee injuries that warrant the use of compression garments are blown ACLs, MCLs, PCLs, and torn cartilages. Knee injuries can be very severe, so it is vital to prevent them at all costs. Using hard braces during games and workouts may not be the solution to preventing knee injuries and managing knee pains as they limit mobility and prevent the knee from getting strong again. As such, knee compression gear and sleeves offer more benefits and solutions than braces.