These are common questions and statements we receive regularly from clients ranging from elite athletes to casual weekend warriors. These concerns are typically rooted in social myths and mechanisms that lead to fear avoidance behavior.
📚First and foremost, popping in your knees isn’t bad, it is perfectly normal. The sound you hear has a menacing name called crepitus. Crepitus can be heard in many joints of the body. In the knee, the noise is typically the build up of gas bubbles in the fluid around the joint popping or potentially a ligament or tendon snapping over a bony prominence.
💪MORE IMPORTANTLY…Recent studies have shown there is NO correlation of crepitus with knee pain. Comparisons of people with noisy knees vs non-noisy knees consistently found that there was NO difference in strength and knee function between the two groups.
Most of the time people think popping in their joints is bad due to subjective perception of their knees NOT objective function. There are multiple avenues that this learned behavior comes from including fear of aging and degeneration, feeling embarrassed when the noise occurs in front of others, or worst of all bad education from healthcare professionals.
🔑Take Home Message… Unless there is associated pain and disability when the cracking and popping happens, there is no reason to be alarmed, as function should be your main concern. There is FAR greater risk of damaging your joints with a sedentary lifestyle and inactivity.
