Rehab for Knee (Tendon?) Injury?

Bigger Stronger Leaner Injuries and Rehab
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Ok, so I have three priorities, which I will list in order of importance. I realize that this all may not be possible at the same time, which is why I’ve rated them according to importance.

First, the cause of all this, and priority #1:

About a year ago, I strained my left knee area while trying out single-leg barbell squats for the first time. Simply put, I went too heavy, was unbalanced, and strained the tendons/muscles around my knee.

It doesn’t bother me all the time - and it only feels uncomfortable/painful (very minor pain, more discomfort than anything) when doing pulling motions, such as sprinting or leg curls. Squats, deadlifts, etc, don’t seem to aggravate it - or, at least, I don’t feel it being aggravated during those exercises.

The area where I feel the most discomfort is the back/outside area of the knee, mostly directly behind and right below, though there is a bit of carry over to just above the back of the knee. The joint, kneecap and bones all feel fine, it’s clearly a tendon/muscle issue.

Last winter, I took a month or two off from all lower body exercise/sprinting, and it seemed to help. This summer I did a lot of conditioning/sprinting, with no discomfort. Only recently has the discomfort returned, and even though I’ve not sprinted in a few weeks and have backed off my other conditioning, it still bothers me.

That’s about all the info I have on it - any suggestions on how to rehab it? Does it just need rest?

That’s the big thing, I mentioned there were a couple other things I wanted to hit:

#2, if I DO need to take some time off of lower body stuff, are there any exercises I CAN safely do without further aggravating those tendons?

#3, kind of tying in with #2, would it be possible to still do any sort of conditioning? When I say conditioning, I’m thinking full body stuff such as burpees, or even just alternating bodyweight squats/push-ups/etc.

Thanks for any advice/ideas.

Ah, and to give a little more perspective - I’m 27, 170lb at about 8-10% body fat.

Thanks!

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Search:: Bullet Proof knees article.

Doesn’t sound like any damage is done see a physical therapist.

If your going to be hard headed about it and not see one the main thing you have to realize is rest is only good for a major injury. Other than that what usually messes up the knee is scar tissue, and the interaction between muscles that are either too tight or too loose.

If you rest, it might feel good while your resting only because you are not going through complete ranges of motion but you may develop more scar tissue that is tougher to breakdown and will cause pain when you return.

The first thing you want to address is pain free range of motion ROM. See what it is.
Then you want to try to extend it to full ROM no pain, with no force.
Then you want to see where can you apply force, and test out the pain there. No joint or ligament damage but pain means either scar tissue or misalignment of knee. This can lead to other muscles not operating correctly like hip, ankle and calf.

Without writing a research paper I would say do a search for bulletproof knees and see how that program works. If you can do it then your good to go. If you can’t you’ll waste too much time trying to diagnose and correct it yourself when you should go to a doctor and save yourself years of annoying minor knee pain.

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Thanks,

I already have pain-free ROM without resistance. It’s only when I need to produce a pulling force that I feel weak/discomfort. It’s not even pain - it’s more a feeling of weakness. Like the muscles/tendons simply won’t put out 100% force.

I’ve checked out the Bulletproof Knee article and will be applying some of the ideas there. If anyone has any other insights or info, I’d be glad to hear it.