A research study published in 2016 provides clear evidence that the Alexander Technique is beneficial for people suffering from knee osteoarthritis. On average, following 20 lessons in the Alexander Technique, participants experienced a significant reduction in knee pain and a significant improvement in functioning. What’s more, these changes were long-lasting, being evident 15 months later.
The study showed the Alexander Technique to be more effective in reducing knee pain than typical exercise-based interventions. So, what might be going on? How did the Alexander Technique achieve its effects?
The most likely answer to this question involves co-contraction, which is the simultaneous activation of muscles on opposite sides of a joint. The researchers in the study provided evidence that the Alexander Technique significantly reduced knee muscle co-contraction: specifically, it reduced the simultaneous activation of medial quadricep and hamstring muscles (vastus medialis and semitendinosus respectively).
As the researchers explain, this is hugely important because there is now a large body of evidence demonstrating that
patients with knee OA [osteoarthritis] exhibit excessive muscular co-contraction … during walking and other functional tasks. This co-contraction increases compressive loads at the knee joint surface, accelerates structural progression of the disease and increases the likelihood that patients will progress to total knee arthroplasty [surgical reconstruction or replacement of a joint]. Elevated loading may also increase the stress on articular structures, such as the joint, bone, synovium/joint capsule and periarticular structures [structures around the joint], resulting in increased pain.
In summary, the study authors suggest that the Alexander Technique, by reducing co-contraction, ‘could reduce the articular loads on the knee joint and this may have a long-term protective effect, reducing the rate of joint destruction’.
Based on a comparison of pain scores, the research paper provides evidence that the Alexander Technique is more effective than traditional approaches in dealing with knee pain, which tend to focus on building muscle strength. In fact, quite remarkably, the Alexander Technique intervention in this study did not result in any increase in muscle strength at all, and yet it led to substantially reduced pain and improved functioning.
This finding confirms the uniqueness of the Alexander Technique: by bringing to light our habits of unnecessary tension we are then able to prevent them, and so improve our overall functioning.
