There be knee pain secrets ahead, including a little sequence thingy I’m using as often I remember to use it. And the more I use it, the better I feel. Moons ago, doctors told me I had patellar tendonosis and patellar tracking problems. I lump these in the “chronic-musculotendon” bucket as opposed to the <I [...]
There be knee pain secrets ahead, including a little sequence thingy I’m using as often I remember to use it. And the more I use it, the better I feel.
Moons ago, doctors told me I had patellar tendonosis and patellar tracking problems. I lump these in the “chronic-musculotendon” bucket as opposed to the <I just snapped every bit of connective tissue in my knee> “acute-internal” bucket.
An Athlete’s Guide to Chronic Knee Pain is a memoir of sorts — what I did to “fix” the pain and problems. And “fix” is in air quotes because, with tendonosis, the pain is always liable to poke back into your life.
And poke it has.
So I poked back.
This sequence is more of a phoenix down than a cure. To understand why, here’s some theory: your knee pain isn’t the fault of the knee, but rather bad systems and structures surrounding the knee.
Just like elbow tendonitis (usually) stems from the wrist and the shoulder, knee tendonitis stems from the foot and the hip. Sure, the knee may be overused, but it’s only overused because the surrounding systems are underused. This is why rest is often a terrible fix for tendonitis. It treats the pain but not the reason for pain.
It’s like a chef that burns himself every time he cooks. Sure, he can stop cooking and stop getting burned. But once he steps back in the kitchen, he’s going to get burned.
Consider this a bandage with some salve . . . maybe. Because this can also cause some wounds.
This is a lens into hip function. You might get knee pain doing this, which is a sign that your hip is under performing more than Yamcha.
Drop into a pigeon-esque pose by collapsing atop a bent leg and extending one leg back. Keep your extended leg bent with the knee resting on the ground. The extended leg = the same leg with knee troubles. Shove your toes into the ground. From this position, your job is to straighten the extended leg.
Your body can do this one of two ways.
- You can power through hip extension.
- You can power through knee flexion.
You’ll be able to tell which pattern your body chooses, which then hints of hip function.
If you have a weak hip, you’ll power through the quads and feel a lot of pressure within the knee cap. You’ll also feel the toes pushing down into the ground.
If you have a strong hip, you’ll barely feel pressure in your knee and your toes won’t be pushing into the ground. Instead, your butt will squeeze into a rock and the heel of the foot will be leading an upward feeling charge to the sky. Great butt strength even’ll get your foot off the ground.
And lifting your foot is a good way to scale into a tougher variation. If you need to make it easier, don’t collapse onto your front leg as much. Turn it into more of a bird dog.
So the game plan?
Do your reps slow and deliberate. Come to a max butt squeeze at the top of every repetition and hold the contraction for a minimum of two seconds.
And frequency wins. If you limit yourself to doing this only when you “train,” you’ve already lost. Chocolate chip cookie yourself on this one. Bake it into you by doing it often as you can. When you wake up. During commercials. Before you go to sleep. In bed.
Use it like you’d use heroin . . . only you don’t have to be afraid of the addiction.