Your natural knee brace (From Your Local Guardian)

Your natural knee brace

2:30pm Tuesday 3rd March 2009

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What's the cruciate ligament?

There are two of them actually, the cruciate ligaments are in your knee, ligaments run from bone to bone and generally are arranged to hold things together.

If you could look down on the knee in 3D from above you would see the cruciates arranged in a cross running from front to back and from below to above.

The knee joint has an almost flat lower part on the tibia (your shin bone) in fact it's called the tibial plateau. So when your knee is working hard, bending a lot, especially under load like kicking or sliding downhill (also known as skiing!) the knee joint is vulnerable: the femur tending to slide forward, off the tibia, with the anterior cruciate resisting this sheer force.

They can get a bit ragged and tatty and you might not necessarily be aware of that because if the muscles on the front and back of your thigh are in good shape, they will be working together like a natural knee brace.