I had a compound fracture of my left tibia when I was younger and I am experiencing a lot of knee pain while doing certain exercises (specifically squats and lunges). I have read other articles/posts regarding this and have added single-leg versions of these exercises to my routine per their suggestions, which has been helping immensely in regards to form and muscle formation, but has been causing even more problems in terms of the pain in my knee.
I have also noticed that there are obvious compensations being made by my right leg while doing squats, which is causing uneven muscular development between my right and left legs… which is bad.
I would love some suggestions on altering my routine.
Also… This may sound stupid, and might be the solution to my problem, but should I look at wearing a brace while doing these exercises? I don’t presently use one, and don’t know how much it actually helps.
I tried the knee brace last night for squats… big help, and no pain this morning. I kind of feel like its cheating for some reason.
Having knee problems sucks when it comes to squatting. I know since I have had bad knees since I was a freshman in high school. One thing that works for me is using knee wraps. If I go heavy and do not use wraps, my knees will hurt for days. Also make sure that your knees are not going to far over your toes, ie., sit back more. I was having major knee pain from squatting and after coming here and asking a few questions I found out that my knees were going too far out over my toes.
So I had to re-learn the correct form, and I have no problems. I will say this, after working on various types of squats, back, front, zercher, bulgarian split, and hack squats; I rarely have any knee pain… Unless I forget my wraps.
GIve this a try.
Start doing leg extensions, one leg at a time. Watch your form. Sometimes, and I’m not saying that this is the case for you, knee problems are the result of an imbalance of strength in the muscles which together form the group of quadracept muscles.