"Micro-bend your knee" is a cue you may hear in standing postures, like trikonasana (triangle pose) or parsvottanasana (pyramid pose), when your teacher is trying to avoid hyperextension of the knee joint.
What is hyperextension?
Hyperextension is when your joint moves beyond a typical range of motion. You can find this most often in the elbow and knee joint, where it may appear like they extend more than 180°. Being able to hyperextend is common in people with hypermobility.
Let's say the thick green line is a thigh bone on top of the knee:
A way to prevent hyperextending or "locking" the knee is to take a micro-bend in the knee. This takes the knee out of hyperextension, and to a degree of relatively typical extension (generally 0°, or straight).
To micro-bend requires engagement of the muscles surrounding the knee joint.
When taking the knee out of hyperextension, you utilise the strength of the surrounding muscles
to hold the joint in space. This takes load off surrounding ligaments, and puts beneficial load on surrounding muscles and tendons.
Micro-bending the knee can foster self-awareness and proprioception in hypermobile folks, whilst ensuring they are utilising the muscles surrounding their flexible joints, rather than relying on their inherent, increased range of motion.
Ok, but why is it called a micro-bend if the leg still looks straight?
To a hypermobile person, hyperextension feels like straightening the knee, even though you can see it hyperextending.
Often, drawing the knee out of hyperextension to what looks like 180° feels like putting - you guessed it - a micro-bend into the knee.
We hope this helps. Please hit us up with more requests for Yoga Speak Explained in the comments, or send us a message!
Emilie & Julie ♡
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