To reduce knee pain, choose fins that strap on your legs, not on your feet. They encourage you to kick with straighter knees. These fins also tend not to aggravate an existing knee problem, if you use them sensibly. In fact, customers find them very useful for knee rehabilitation after knee injuries and knee operations. You should check with your doctor and/or physiotherapist first of course and read our tips. These comfortable fins don’t hurt your knees.
Regular foot fins can cause knee pain that gets worse the more you use them. This is because regular foot fins cause you to bend your knees too much when you kick. Also, the leg forces needed to hold the foot fins at their required angle in the water, twists your knees and strains your ankles. After a while the knee pain builds up. Your knees can even stay sore long after you leave the water.
You can test this for yourself by swimming with no fins. You will probably find that kicking without any fins doesn’t hurt your knees so much. Most likely, this is because you are kicking with straighter knees and with less twisting of your knee joints.
Firstly, these fins avoid knee pain because they encourage you to kick from your hips with less knee-bend. Kicking with straighter knees reduces knee pain and strain in your knee joints and surrounding ligaments. It also reduces lower back pain. This is actually how good swimmers kick, with a smooth, streamlined kick.
Secondly, these fins can be adjusted around your leg to be perpendicular to your kick direction. You simply line up the fin centreline with the toe that matches your kick direction. This minimises knee twisting pain. It also reduces calf muscle strain and cramps.
Thirdly, you don’t even have to kick these fins much to get the benefits from them. Even if you swim mainly with arm power and only kick a little (or even trail your legs), the fins still help to straighten your knees and lift your body horizontal and streamlined. You can then add as much kick power as your knees feel comfortable with.
Three good reasons why these comfortable fins don’t cause knee pain and are much kinder to your knees than regular foot fins!
shinfinTM fins do much more than reducing knee pain
See related FAQ about why these fins are also kinder to your lower back and why they streamline your swimming.
See all FAQs about the comfort of these new fins.