Patellar bands are a tight band that you can wrap around the bottom of your kneecap. It sits between where the patellar tendon attaches to the patella and where it attaches to the quadricep. It is meant to create a false attachment of the patellar tendon and prevent any knee pain someone may experience when jumping, sprinting, or making sharp lateral movements.
Knee pain affects all athletes from freshman to seniors. This limits the athletes performance in their sport being played. The pain they experience oftentimes is a lingering pain throughout their season, which could degrade one’s mental and physical health.
Knee pain can also ruin some athletes’ careers, leading to season ending injuries or being sidelined for an extensive amount of time. This could ultimately hurt the athletes’ loveathletes’ love for their sport.
There are athletes that wear patellar bands for knee pain in many sports like volleyball, dance, track, cross country…etc, but we focused mainly on basketball players to evaluate the rise of the magical bands. We interviewed many different players from freshman to seniors to fully understand if patellar bands really help athletes or if athletes are looking for a new way to up their style in their sport.
What are the advantages of wearing a patellar band?
For someone that is always having to make very athletic movements in their sports, patellar bands are for you, especially for athletes that have pre-existing and present knee injuries, patellar bands are also known to help.
“Yes it actually helps because it provides support under my knee and helps with the pain even after my injury,” junior basketball player Brooks Rams said.
Besides athletes, even trained professionals have stated that patellar bands are a great way to stay safe on the court and take away your knee pain.
“There have been good studies that prove that wearing a patellar band does work by shortening up the patellar tendon and taking some stress off the tendon,” LFHS Athletic Trainer Bart Castillo said.
What are the disadvantages of wearing a patellar band?
Where there are a lot of advantages, there are also many disadvantages as well. The band can feel uncomfortable at first when someone who is not used to wearing it plays their sport with it for the first time.
“They can be pretty uncomfortable sometimes and can leave the area under the ban pretty red,” senior basketball player Grant Mordini said.
The uncomfortability of the bands are common throughout almost all athletes that wear them. Over time there are other issues that associate with the bands as well.
“Disadvantages could be the expenses of having to pay for pre-wrap and having to wrap your knee up everytime,” senior basketball player AJ Udechukwu said.
Do you wear them for style or do you think they really help you?
While Patellar bands are very stylish on the court, they also are a great way to ensure peoples safety and it has been seen that athletes have noticed an decrease in their knee pain overtime even if they began by wearing the bands to look better on the court.
“At first I wore them for style but then after a few days I started feeling a real change in my knee pain,” freshman basketball player Vince Smith said.
Some will see the bands as something that is necessary to wear instead of something they choose to wear to look good.
“I’ve never worn them for style, I personally don’t think it looks good on the court. I wear them because I think they actually help,” Mordini said.
No matter how you view the bands, there is a common theme of success between everyone we interviewed. For anyone that experiences knee pain or participates in sports that involve much jumping and sharp sprints, patellar bands could be the solution.
“I personally think it helps alot. I did track and I jump too, and when I land it feels much better. I also feel it helps me mentally know that I am safer,” Udechukwu said.
