How I Fixed my Knees: Solutions to Knee Stiffness & Minor Injuries
Many who complain about their knees may have simple stiffness that is very easy to deal with. This article discusses knee stiffness and other knee conditions, with methods I found to work well for knee pain and injuries. I had bad knees but now have great knees. Now my knees never limit any aggressive exericse or anything I wish to do. This information does not come from a professional.
When I had my knee problem:
Now my knees feel great running 16 mph or squatting all the way down.
I had a habit of weight lifting and aerobic exercise for decades. By the mid-2000's I would typically do parallel barbell squats, partial deadlifts, many dumbbell exercises, and use varying aerobic machines including the treadmill, elliptical, and stairstep machines. Eventually I started getting knee pain. I first noticed this after mowing thick grass. Soon, I could not even walk the treadmill or use the elliptical without a surprising amount of pain. I felt like I was tearing up my knees.
Thus began a year-long search for the cause of my pain. My GP ruled out chondromalacia and referred me to an orthopedic surgeon, who ruled out all obvious maladies and saw no sign of arthritis in an X-ray. He concluded that he could not help me. My chiropractor gave me the best advice, which ultimately led to the solution. He said:
Running in the pool did not help me per se, but it showed that even non-impact exercises could produce pain. Pool running did not cause much pain, but it clearly caused some. Deadlifting from the floor instead of a platform also did not help, but it seems to be a better way to deadlift, and it is how competitors do it
Before telling how full squats helped me, I should explain what a full barbell squat is, and its benefits. Squats are often classified by how low you go:
There are also variables besides just depth, such as stance width, the use of supports, location of the barbell, and alternatives to barbells.
Deep squats are frequently discouraged out of fear that they stress the knees and cause arthritis. This fear is based on a 1961study by K.K. Klein. That was done using poor measuring equipment and incorrect assumptions, and it has been discredited:
Several studies after Klein have shown protective effects of squats, and that stresses to the knee are minimized when squats are deep. ACL stress, compressive stress, and sheer stress are all greater when one goes down only partially. The only stress that increases as one goes down is to the PCL. People with prior PCL injury or other reasons to be concerned for their PCL might want to limit squat depth. Most everyone else, however, will experience less stress if they go deep.
One reason deep squats stress the knees less is that in a deep squat one has to use less weight.
I used to have a terrific link, but I think the article was removed. The below are good, however.
Videos of Squatters in Action
Probably the act of deep squatting itself did little for me. But to be able to squat deep, one must first have knee and hip mobility--which I did not have. My chiropractor advised me that those aspiring to squat deep should spend some time each day sitting low. Sitting on a low stool or a stack of books flexes the hips and knees. Since most people are not limber in these joints, low sitting greatly improves mobility.
As I improved my mobility through low sitting and deep squatting, my knee pain vanished. Subsequently, I resumed running on the treadmill--16 miles per hour! I backed off from the 16 mph speed when the treadmills in the gym started to degrade. They ceased to be able to sustain a 16 mph speed with a man my weight running on them. So I backed off to typically 13 mph with the treadmill sloped.
I have found that heavy leg extensions feel like they heavily abraid my patellas (knee caps). In fact, studies indicate this is the case. But my knees feel great when I squat all the way down. No knee exercise feels better for the knees. Not the leg press and certainly not the leg extension.
I fixed my knees. I consistently ran on the treadmill with a cruising speed faster than most people ever go and with a peak speed limited only by the capabilities of the treadmill. After years of this, I have had to stop for awhile because of foot trouble--I developed plantar fasciitis. I think what caused that was running backwards. I was able to run very smooth going forwards, but backward running put huge stresses on my plantar fascias. When the fasciitis is gone I will tell what I had to do to get rid of it.
If you have arthritis, I can't help you (but very careful full-down squats might do you a lot of good). From my experience, however, it seems that perhaps a majority of those who complain about their knees have the same problem I did: stiffness. I have failed to convince anyone to even TRY limbering up their knees. I'm the only one I've found willing to do it. I almost feel like the lame man who stood up and walked. Why do people complain that because of bad knees they can no longer run, yet refuse to so much as try a simple measure that, given the symptoms they describe (which usually sound like mere stiffness) may fix their knees right up? The sun came up for my knees, and it has stayed up many years! My knees were bad but now they're good! Don't you want healthy knees? Just try this! If it doesn't work for you, that's fine, but if you have knee problems, give this a shot!
These are my methods for knee limberness:
The first two approaches limber up the knees and the hips. Kneeling limbers the knee and can also work the hip if you lean over like a praying Moslem. Kneeling is harder to control and takes more effort, however. And if you kneel with your torso upright, your heels will dig into your butt. Too much of this can be problematic. An advantage of kneeling is that it is easy to avoid any stress on the plantar fascias--an important issue if you have plantar fasciitis.
Limber up your knees and hips! With limber knees and hips, running feels like coasting on wheels. If you strike your foot on an obstacle as you walk, typically your foot jerks up in the blink of an eye, so that instead of falling forward you keep walking without stumbling. You can move and bend without strain, pain, or injury.
Nearly everyone has to deal with knee pain sometime in their life. In my quest to solve my knee trouble and keep my knees from interfering with aggressive exercise, I have learned a lot about knee pain:
This is difficult or impossible to heal, but all experts recommend gentle exercise, including strength and range of motion (ROM) training. Avoid high-impact exercises such as running. Squatting for arthritics is of course controversial; I think some arthritics would benefit from full squats. If you have arthritis, consider healing rooms.
I suspect very much knee trouble is only stiffness. When a stiff person moves, he tugs at his tendons, cartilage, and maybe ligaments, causing pain, irritation, and injury. The simple method I implemented cured my stiffness and should cure most people. Of course, once "cured," one has to continue the stretches to maintain limberness.
Pain manifests where the pes anserinus tendon triad attaches to the tibia (shin). This spot is at the proximal (which in this case means at the top) portion of the tiba, on the medial side (left side for the right knee, right side for the left knee), a little bit anterior (frontward). In other words, the pain is below the knee on the inner side toward the front. Pain often occurs if the knee is flexed a long time, like I suggest to "cure" stiffness. The cause of this pain is typically a tight ht sartorius. If you are sitting low or kneeling, and you feel pes anserinus pain, you should be able to quickly alleviate it by massaging the inner and front (i.e., medial and anterior) portions of the thigh muscles. Don't be surprised if you find tender, inflamed knots. I have found self-massage to be very effective at relaxing these knots and helping them heal. Heavy leg training, with squats, deadlifts, and running, produce soreness that can cause this condition.
The saphenous nerve runs, among other places, right by the knee, just above the insertion of the pes anserinus. Fast running can irritate this nerve by tugging at it. If the nerve is too short, then intense knee flexion, such as from my recommended knee limbering postures can also overstretch it. The manifestation in my knee is pain just above the pes anserinus. The pain can feel like it is deep in the knee, or in the medial meniscus. However, upon careful inspection it turns out to be in the skin. To test whether your pain is saphenous neuritis, check the skin at the tibia's medial upper condyle. For the left knee, that would be on the right side of the bulbous formation at the top of the shin bone. For the left knee, it would be at the right side. If the nerve is inflamed, you should be able to aggravate the pain by manipulating the skin. You should laso be able to move the pain by moving the skin. Move the skin aside as far as you can. Then manipulate the spot where the pain originally was. Also manipulate the skin you moved. If you find that the pain moved with the skin, you most likely have saphenous neuritis. If the pain does not move with the skin, then something else is wrong.
Sometimes saphenous neuritis causes a sudden sharp pain that can manifest during walking or exercise. It feels worse than it is, because the saphenous nerve is a pain nerve. It will tell you your knee is in trouble, when really the nerve is just inflamed.
Some people get saphenous neuritis from an injury during surgery or an accident. If, however, you merely over-stretched the nerve, it will quickly heal if you're gentle with it. Stretch this nerve. If you stretch it very gently, not progressing too fast, the nerve will adjust to the greater length and stop having trouble.If the nerve hurts, you may choose to back off on knee stretches a little bit. But don't stop the stretches altogether, because the nerve needs to be gently lengthened.
Chondromalacia seems to be an inflamed patella (kneecap), seemingly involving a form of cartilage damage that can heal, and linked to overuse. It is easy to diagnose and very easily cured with time. Expect a long period of rest and rehab, during which time you will have to forego your favorite sport that caused the problem.
Chondromalacia links:
This is pain in the patellar tendon/ligament, which (runs over the kneecap). The portion above the patella is a tendon; the portion below is a ligament. It is not clear whether patellar tendinitis really is tendinitis, or what is really wrong in this condition. What is known is that it heals easily if the athllete backs off from exercise early. Rest and rehab must happen soon, or the condition can transition to the chronic form, which is very difficult to heal.
I have occasionally injured my patellar tendon and ligament. In my experience, an irritated or lightly injured patellar tendon or ligament heals very rapidly when the painful spots are carefully, diligently massaged. I'm talking about pain right over the kneepcap or just beyond it--places obviously occupied by patellar tendon/ligament material. Massage seems like a panacea that greatly accelerates healing and also improves athletic performance for when you exercise (carefully) with the injury. This massage must be performed by the injured person or a skilled professional who can ascertain where the tender spots are and precisely how much pressure to apply.
I also might have had actual patellar tendonitis when I had my problem with stiffness. As already discussed, I fixed my condition through gentle stretching. Massage, however, seemed to be what finally removed the pain. If I had not massaged my tendon, the pain might have hung around much longer.
Steve is not a medical professional and does not offer health advice for pay. He presents what he has learned in his own experience, research, and consultation with doctors. This advice seems worthwhile, but your specific conditions may differ from Steve's.