The Ultimate Guide of Knee Compression Sleeve

Do knee compression sleeves work? Why should I wear compression knee sleeves? Knee compression sleeves are designed to provide knee support and compression that increase blood flow and reduce pain. The important element from a knee compression sleeve is the valuable compression for knees to encourage blood flow to promote recovery.

Knee compression sleeves are also designed to protect your knees from future injury and reduce knee pressure when you are running, lifting, or participating in various exercises and sports. Knee compression sleeves have been proven in many researches about the immediate efficacy of compression knee sleeve on knee pain.

Do Knee Compression Sleeves Work?

The answer in short is, yes, knee compression sleeve works well when you are recovering from a knee injury as well as providing sufficient protection to your knees during exercises or sports. You might wonder how can knee compression sleeve reduces pain or swelling. It’s because of the compression sleeve adds warmth to encourage blood flow around knees. From a proprioception perspective, it can provide the benefits which are more than a mechanical support mechanism for your knee joint.

Knee compression sleeves can also limit the patella movement and provide more stability for your knees during workouts or exercises. You can do your daily exercises more easily and have a better tolerance to the potential risk of knee injury by having a significant functional improvement from knee compression sleeves. It will also provide more comfort to your knees by controlling and alleviating your knee pain.

Knee compress sleeves may not be enough for severe knee problems or injuries but it can help for:

• Provide valuable compression to improve blood circulation around the kneecap
• Maintain warmth to your knees to speed up the recovery process
• Stabilize your knees and maintain a flexible range of motions
• Improve proprioception by helping you to feel the motions in your knee joint and boost confidence for post-surgery recovery
• Provide a steady supply of nourishing oxygen and nutrients for the synovial membrane as well as lubricating the joint with sufficient synovial fluid.

The following knee joint diagram has illustrated the locations of the synovial membrane and synovial fluid:

Knee Compression Sleeve vs. Knee brace

You might wonder what’s the differences between knee compression sleeve and knee brace. Firstly, the main difference is that knee compression does not function in the same way a knee brace would. We can distinguish that by identifying the design purpose between knee compression sleeve and knee brace. The primary purpose of using knee braces is to protect existing injury from reinjury and support your knees for recovery. In contrast, the main purpose for knee compression sleeves is to provide valuable compression to increase blood flow and reduces the risk of damage and prevent future damage.

Secondly, knee braces usually come with mechanical supports such as hinges or struts that act as a substitute knee for your body, whereas knee compression sleeves do not provide a replacement for the function of your knees or completely limit the range of motion. Knee compression sleeves are more suitable for providing additional benefits such as providing valuable compression to your knees during daily exercises, workouts.

How Does Knee Compression Sleeve Help?

Knee compression sleeves are suitable for a wide range of purposes. Generally speaking, they are very effective for protecting and providing compression around your knees for various uses such as running, basketball, workouts, sports.

Knee compression sleeve can apply gentle and stable pressure around your knee joint in order to provide optimal muscle support by forming structural support during the workout or daily activities. Knee compression sleeve can broaden the range of exercises and sports you were able to tackle by offering extra protection for injury prevention. For people who are a big fan of impact sports that puts high level of stress on your knees and causes cartilage wear and tear, but looking to get rid of the heaviness from traditional knee braces. Then knee compression sleeve is the answer for you to provide sufficient knee support, protect your knees while maintaining a fixable range of motion.

So how does it help, exactly?

Knee compression sleeves are specifically designed to slide on over top of the knee and protect the knee from future injury or risk of damage by providing warmth and limiting the patella movement. It helps reduce pressures for daily exercises like running, jumping and climbing, which may put a lot of stress on your knees.

Knee compression sleeves work well by adding valuable compression elements that increase your blood flow and help to relieve knee pain. This benefit proves that the compression aspect is so vital in terms of its functionality. A compressed knee increases blood flow and reduces pain through the blood vessels of the knee which can allow for a better faster recovery after knee injuries. By wearing knee compression sleeves in the right way and time, it can directly result in less pain and swelling during after performance. Hence knee compression sleeves do offer significant benefits to support your knees and speed up recovery.

Many reviewers have mentioned that knee compression sleeve has helped to maintain an active lifestyle by encouraging them to keep moving with less pain and better protection. Additionally, comfort is the key to helping sleeve wearers use knee compression sleeve for daily exercises. Thankful for the breathable material that most of the knee compression sleeves should have which allows sleeve wearers to wear it for many purposes or even wear it underpants on their way to work.

Some of the knee compression sleeves are especially helpful for running. They have a silicone grip gel that helps the sleeves to stay in place when you are running and compression fabric made by nylon or latex ensures the durability for the sleeves. They might also help reduce swelling and inflammation and speed up the recovery for the runner’s knee. The time frame for recovering from knee injuries can last for months or years. Choosing a knee compression sleeve that can serve your purpose, along with lots of comfort will help your recovery tremendously in the long run. Wearing a knee compression sleeve is an ideal way to break the cycle and get your exercise routine back on track with less soreness from your knee.

Do Compression Sleeves Work for Knee Pain?

Knee compression sleeve can help in a few different aspects for knee pain:

Biomechanical and proprioception aspects

A Study about the effects of knee sleeve on knee proprioception has tested a group of twenty healthy male sports students without knee injuries by asking them to wear knee sleeves. Then investigate the threshold of detection of their passive knee movement by measuring knee angle. They repeated the same test for patients with a knee injury. The results have suggested that knee sleeve does alleviate knee pain by benefiting from an increase in proprioception.

Neoprene knee sleeve application - a common method to prevent anterior knee pain

Other studies about neoprene knee sleeve have indicated that neoprene knee sleeve (NKS) is a common method for knee pain. Many doctors do believe that neoprene knee sleeve can help patients speed up their recovery because it provides optimal compression to improve blood circulation at the knee joint to reduce swelling of the knee joint.

Preservation of temperature at the joint

Additionally, neoprene knee sleeve provides warmth to your knees to increase the athlete’s performance. With increased blood circulation around your knee joint, you will have less chance to experience knee injury and avoid knee overuse problems. Additionally, research has shown that some neoprene sleeves can help to maintain higher skin and intramuscular temperature during periods of inactivity. Therefore, it can help to reduce the probability of a musculotendinous injury and avoid potential knee pain.

Knee Compression Sleeve Benefits

The main benefit of knee compression sleeve is that it can provide superior knee support without compromising your mobility. It is generally made by breathable compression fabric which can absorb sweat during exercises and sports.

Knee compression sleeve provides essential compression to reduce muscle oscillation and narrows blood vessels, so your knee or leg area will have less stress on the muscles and more efficient blood circulation which also helps to relieve stress from muscles, ligaments and tendons during intense workouts.

The benefits of knee compression sleeve can be summarized into 2 main aspects. Firstly, support and injury prevention are the first key aspect from knee compression sleeve as it provides the essential knee support to help prevent injuries especially for intense workouts that put heavy pressure on knees. Secondly, it helps you to push your boundaries that you can do during rehabilitation.

For example, you may be limited to many sports during recovery but knee compression sleeve can help you to move freely and easily. Because it can reduce soreness and provide extra protection so you can push your boundaries with more confidence in your mind.

Although knee compression sleeve provides helpful solutions for knee protection, protecting a previous injury as well as speeding up the recovery time, please bear in mind that you should not cut corners by not doing warm-up and cool-down before or after exercises.

What are Compression Knee Sleeves Used for, and How Does it Help?

Other than wearing knee compression sleeves for daily exercise and sports, you can also wear knee sleeves if you are experiencing symptoms like sore knee, knee arthritis, swelling and inflammation. Knee compression sleeves are also helpful during rehabilitation after meniscus tear surgery. Additionally, it might reduce the symptoms of jumper’s knee.

Knee compression sleeves mainly help in a way to provide valuable compression around your knees to increase blood flow in order to speed up recovery thus reduce swelling and inflammation.

Swelling and Inflammation

Some of the knee compression sleeves which are made for reducing swelling and inflammation can provide medical-grade compression to boost blood circulation in order to reduce swelling and inflammation. Providing compression of the injured joint can also help to decrease inflammation and control the level of swelling to your knee joint.

Arthritis

Knee compression sleeves that are made for arthritis can help patients to maintain an active lifestyle by helping them to fight for painful and degenerative conditions due to inflammation in the joints by improving blood circulation to reduce stiffness and pain. Maintain regular movement is important to help you to recover from arthritis. Knee compression sleeves also help to reduce stress when you flex your joints to encourage you to maintain the flexibility in your joints.

Meniscus tear

The meniscus is commonly torn by rotating the knee too quickly when your foot cannot follow the movement accordingly. Will a compression knee sleeve help meniscus tear?  The answer in short is 'yes' but knee compression sleeve might only be helpful for a minor tear with mild pain and swelling and the symptom relives in 2-3 weeks.

Wearing knee compression sleeve can help patients with minor tear to offload some pressure from knees and encourage them to go more miles with less pain. For moderate and severe tear, you are definitely required a hinged knee brace to guide your knee movements by hinges to ensure safe knee support as well as seeking for doctor’s advice.

Can a Knee Compression Sleeve Help Prevent Knee Surgery?

Studies have shown that knee compression sleeve does provide functional improvements for pain relief and stabilize knee joints. You will be benefited by wearing knee compression sleeve to be able to tolerate various sports or exercises. Research in 2016 for a randomized clinical trial also discovered that knee pain while walking, playing sports and climbing stairs can be significantly improved by wearing a knee compression sleeve. It can lead to better outcomes within 6-12 weeks of treatment without surgery where the positive effect diminished after 1 year.

Hence knee compression sleeve does apply a medially directed force on the patella and relieves the symptom. Knee compression sleeve may not be able to prevent knee surgery for severe knee problems but it does help to provide medical benefits like significantly lower limb pain and medically directed force on the patella.

Do Knee Compression Sleeves Help for Exercises and Sports & How Do They Help?

Knee compression sleeves do help for exercise and sports by having the ability to relieve mild pain. It does help you to maintain an active lifestyle no matter you just simply want to improve knee support during sports or protect your knees while maintaining a natural range of motion. As we discuss in the previous sections, it does play a vital role in helping you to relieve knee pain so you will have better tolerance for the types of sports you can do.

Nowadays, osteoarthritis is no longer a common disease for elderly people, an increasing trend of young people with osteoarthritis are spreading across the world. However, not everyone can wear a bulky hinged knee brace for daily exercises. Thus, knee compression sleeves are here to fill the gap by providing you the essential medical benefits to continue to exercise while maintaining the lightness and the mobility. Knee compression sleeves do help for various exercises and sports.

So, what’re the main benefits that knee compression sleeves can bring to specific exercises and sports and what’re essential elements that a knee compression sleeve should have specified for each sport or exercise? Let’s continue to explore:

Recommended to wear sleeves for:

Running

What is the best knee compression sleeve for running? Running is a daily activity but it does apply a relatively great amount of stress on your knee joints. Knee compression sleeve for running should be comfortable enough for everyday use and relieve mild knee pain so you continue to run on a daily basis. It can also alleviate the effect of overuse on your knees.

The benefits of compression knee sleeves for running include:

• Less amount of stress on your knees
• Comfortable for daily use
• Breathable material to able to absorb sweat

Powerlifting

Powerlifting deals with heavyweight on three combined movements: bench press, deadlifts and squats. All of these movements put high amount of stress on your knees and your knees can be easily injured without proper protections. Knee compression sleeve can provide sufficient support during the training and reduce muscle fatigue, improve muscle coordination as well as protect your knees against injuries. Along with lifting straps, you can also enhance your performance for heavy pulls and deadlifts.

You might wonder what do knee sleeves do for squats? The benefits of compression knee sleeves for three combined movements from powerlifting include:

• Provide valuable compression
• Help your knees to warm up quickly to avoid potential injuries
• Knee compression sleeve can stabilize your knees when you squat under heavy pressure.

Cycling

Wearing a knee compression sleeve can minimize your chances of a cycling injury. Cycling involve the repeated movement of the knees when peddling, hence it can easily worsen wear-and-tear for your knees. According to a study in Californian about the overuse injuries among recreational cyclists: out of 518 cyclists, 41,7% of them have reported knee pain, 85% reported at least one overuse injury and 36% required medical treatment.  Hence, it’s crucial to wear knee compression sleeves to keep your knees warm as you pedal through your daily training to avoid injuries. 

The benefits of compression knee sleeves for cycling include:

• Enhanced stability
• Improved proprioception will help you feel your knee joint movements to help you better control your bike
• Improve blood circulation and reduce fatigue around your knees

Do not recommend to wear sleeves for:

Volleyball

Knee compression sleeves may not be the best way to protect your knees during volleyball because it might not be strong enough to stand the impact. Buying volleyball knee pads that are specifically made for high impact on knees and hard landing during volleyball games will be a more durable and safer solution to protect your knees. Thus, knee compression sleeves are not an ideal solution for injury prevention during volleyball games.

Basketball

The best knee compression sleeve for basketball should provide enhanced knee support and stability to reduce the risk of injury. You might wear knee support instead of a knee sleeve because it can give extra protection for high-impact sports like basketball. If you really want to get rid of the heaviness from knee brace or support. You should try a medical-grade knee compression sleeve specifically designed to improve blood flow and deplete lactic acid to speed up recovery during or after playing basketball.

Knee Compression Sleeve Thickness

To fully understand how does a knee compression sleeve works, we should also be aware that knee compression sleeves can come with three different thickness: 3mm, 5mm and 7mm. Generally speaking, the 3mm and 5mm thick knee compression sleeves are lighter. It provides a more flexible range of motion which may be suitable for long-distance training due to the lightweight and flexibility as well as helping them to regain control of their knee movements.

In contrast with 3mm and 5mm thick knee compression sleeve, a 7mm knee compression sleeve offers better stability and additional support during high impact sports like weight lifting or rehabilitation after knee surgery. The 7mm knee sleeve also helps you to have a better awareness of the knee to help you have a precise, stable performance during various exercises and sports.

Takeaway - Do Knee Compression Sleeve Really Work?  

Knee compression sleeves do play a vital role in helping people to protect their knees while maintaining a flexible range of motions around their knee joints. It also provides valuable compression to improve blood flow around the knees to reduce swelling and inflammation. Wearing knee compression sleeves can help to protect your knees and improve performance for exercises and sports by offering sufficient support while allowing you to feel the comfort by enjoying breathable material that can absorb sweat.

From biomechanical and proprioception aspect, knee compression sleeves do alleviate knee pain in certain scenarios and allow you to feel the motions in your knee joint and boost confidence for post-surgery recovery. Last but not least, knee compression sleeves do offer the benefit of preserving of temperature at the joint by adding warmth to encourage blood flow around knees to speed up recovery.

Therefore, knee compression sleeves do work to protect your knees during exercises and sports and provide valuable compression around your knees to increase blood circulation. However, it cannot replace the roles of other knee braces and supports like a hinged knee brace, especially for patients with completely torn meniscus. Those patients would require the guidance of their knee movements by the hinges from a hinged knee brace to provide extra knee support and protection as well as providing therapeutic pressure of the support from the kneecap to the soft tissues of the knee.