T Nation

Prescription For Knee Pain

Bodybuilding
#1

Hi,
I’m experiencing the consequences of not stretching my legs during lower body workouts. My right knee has been painful for the past two weeks which has forced me to curtail squats and DL’s.

I’ve visited my chiropractor who specializes in treating weight/strength trainers. He himself is an olympic lifter. He prescribed a good amount of adductor stretches. They seem to be helping, as I notice less pain when I ascend and descend a staircase.

I’d like to hear how other lifters have rehabbed their knee pain. Any advice is appreciated. I’m itching to get back to the squat rack. Thank you.

#2

Depends on the cause of the pain, but I’ve had patelofemoral pain that improved with bodyweight deep squats(as deep as possible without pain) every morning, bike riding and walking.

ITB release with a roller or ball.

Glute strenght with some 1 legged deadlifts.

I found doing all the isolated glute and VMO stuff did very little to actually help with the pain.

They may be effective if the muscles arent firing, but it was the squats and stretching that really made the diference.

#3

I used to get knee pain all the time.
I would be sitting, and my knee woudl just start to ache, this had something to do wtih the job i used to have and a lack of flexability and strenth.
As soon as i started doing hamstring and quad stretches, combined with jogging the knee pain went away almsot instantly. Hehe, and JOGGING at that.
(Just kind of a joke because jogging is the cause of knee pain most of the time)

Remember, your muscles and all that other junk are all attached to things like your lower back and knee caps in direct and indirect ways. So if they are tense they pull on your knee cap and whatnot in all sorts of discusting ways.
Stretch everything in your body out NICE and GENTLY! Trust me on that one because i wasted alot of time trying to over stretch.

Cyah

#4

I also was suffering from Knee pain, eventhough I regularly static stretching my whole body, at least once a week. It got so bad that I went 2 my doc, the x-rays & his evalutaion showed that my knee was fine, but the pain was still there.
Then I started doin the foam roller thing for my quads, hams, glutes & calves as well as streching more often in the week & theres pain no more.

P.S: check out the “feel better for 10$” article.

Hope this helps.

#5

Solution to MY particular knee pain problem:

  • Stronger adductors
  • Stretch & foam-roll ITB and abductors
  • Stretch & foam-roll quads and hip-flexors

Incorporating unilateral work has also “miraculously” fixed a lot of other random issues/pains from the ribcage down.

Hope this helps.

– ElbowStrike

#6

good posts above; most knee pain is hip related…read all of Michael Boyle’s articles, specifically “Anterior Knee Pain” at www.michaelboyle.biz

#7

and also on here Robertson’s 18 tips for bulletproof knees.