Knee Pain

General
41

I work the inner quads by lifting my straight leg with 2.5 weights on each ankle. I also do various squeezes with things between my legs (usually a basket ball) and by twisting my legs inward. They also get work when I skip sideways.

I’d like to have access to a gym with leg adductor, abductor, and leg curl but it’s too expensive to consider.

Nope no bicycle. I also live where you can’t ride 1/2 mile without a significant hill and my knees would not take that. Flat ground with high cadence would be good with clipless pedals.

42

Hills shouldn’t hurt your knees on the bike because you have gears and can just put it in an easy gear and spin up the hill.

Why not try a gym out for like 2 months and see if doing leg strengthening there and riding a stationary bike helps out your knee pain? It has to be worth the price in the long run.

43

Money is tighter than the seams on a football. Going to the gym is not an option. There is no muscle I can’t work at home or in some other creative way.

I have to disagree with you on cycling. Cycling involves pressure on the pedals and pressure on pedals (and that general motion) are what irritate my knees.

But don’t get me wrong I appreciate your suggestions. But with over 12 weeks of work I have a pretty good idea of what does and doesn’t irritate my knee.

44

Hi Ezas,

Sorry to hear you are still having alot of problems. I know this is frustrating.
If you really enjoy unicycling, you should see an orthopedic doctor, get xrays as well as see a good physical therapist. A trained set of eyes will find things you don’t. If trained eyes don’t find anything, you probably have patellofemoral pain syndrome. Doctors and PTs will often give this diagnosis when the source of the pain is really not known. Because of this diagnosis the treatment is broad.

I saw a good PT that found alot of symmetry issues between my left and right legs. Basically my left leg and hips had flexibility and strength issues. Now I am having some
good success unicycling and am very slowly increasing time in the saddle.

45

Scha,

Raleigh, nice town. Lived there for about 5 years about 10 years ago.

Short of a bone sticking out of my leg I won’t be seeing any drs soon. I already owe a bunch of money to Dr’s and can’t afford the care I should be getting as it is.

I have found and corrected all the discrepancies I can find. I found I could:

reach a little higher with my left hand
twist a little further around to the right
quad tighter on left
IT band/piriformis tighter on right
little better at balancing on my left foot

All of these have been corrected. Strength wise they are equaled out. I count or watch the clock on everything I do.

There is not much that you can do with the legs that i’m not doing.

46

Ezra,

I wish you well and hope you pain goes away.

Regards,

47

Thanks Scha.

I’m out of ideas and out of motivation.

Something I did yesterday or today irritated my left knee, and I have zero idea what it was. It’s as bad as it has been in the past 2 months. Equally demotivating is that it took 5 days to recover from that little bit of riding i did. In the past it has ‘healed’ as quickly as 2 days.

Long story short, I’m not making any progress after 14 weeks off from riding. 14 weeks of stretching and exercise almost everyday.

I’ll decide in a week to keep the goal of riding or not. I’ll consider a visit to a Orthopedic but no way I can afford PT. No way no how.

48

Hi ezas,
Sorry to hear about your knee,I don’t have ideas but I have positive energy to send you and prayings for you to heal . Our body is renewing itself all the time,don’t loose your hope,I know it is easy to say ,hard to do; but be positive,I hope you will heal soon.:slight_smile:

49

Anyone still reading this thread?

Today I made a good but heartbreaking discovery. My office chair was too low. While i had read about secretary’s knee and was trying to sit at my desk with my legs out on a low stool under the desk, it didn’t seem to be doing much, so I stopped. But I still tried to remind myself not to hook my feet under the chair.

About two weeks ago I burned out on stretching and exercising so I took a break AND my knees GOT WORSE even though I’ve been doing no riding. I’ve been racking my brains trying to find some reasoning behind all this.

Today I looked down and noticed that the front of my thigh (near the knee) was a little bit higher than the thigh near the hip. While I knew too much sitting was probably not good for me, it turns out that sitting at all has been f* me up. And I spend a lot of time in this chair. Besides following a few forums and being a news junkie, I spend quite a bit of time reading about Cosmology and related subjects on the web (and in books)

I’ve had this office chair like forever and I thought the piston had gone bad because I couldn’t get the chair to come back up. It’s been like this for at least a couple of years. It didn’t really bother me because a few years ago I lowered my desk to what is considered a good typing height.

Well today I took a serious look at it and got the piston unstuck. I put some thick oil/grease here and there and it now it stays up. So know I have it at the highest position. I also raised my car seat and moved the seat back as far as it could and still reach the pedals.

On the good side I have much better glute activation now, stronger legs, better balance and good core strength.

This discovery has also cause me to refocus my energies on different stretches exercises. I’ve gone from quadriceps tendinitis back to Chondrodmalacia. Depending on the damage (a life time of athletic abuse and general not young anymore syndrome) I could be fooked. Or I could finally be on the road to better knee health.

I also broke down and made an appointment with are very good sports orthopedic. I’m going to have to not eat for a couple of weeks to pay for it

Heartbroken because almost 4 months of work has done little to alleviate my knee pain.

I hope this refocus on the cause, and exercise routine will bring about fairly quick results.

I rode my 20" today and that seemed to go alright. My knees were already complaining today so I figured any irration riding would make itself apparent right away, but the riding didn’t seem to irritate them any further. It would be awesome if I found out I could ride the 20" as part of my rehab. Pushing that 29" wheel around just might have been too much work.

But in really good news, I made my goal of reaching 175 lbs before my birthday on Nov 1st. I have lost 36 lbs since March 21st. That’s just about 1lb/week loss. I’m pretty proud since I did it with very little aerobic exercise.

For just $125 (the cost of a visit to the Ortho) I will teach you my weight loss secrets.

Well off to do some light stretching now that I have a fresh idea on what stretches to do.

if you are still following my saga, thanks. If I had known in the beginning that 4 months in I was still not riding regularly, I think I would have packed it in and sold the unis.

50

You’ve already let the cat out of the bag: expensive visits to the orthopedist result in much less eating, thus weight loss. :slight_smile:

On a more serious note it sounds like you are doing self-administered PT, which is fine but may be lacking strengthening exercises based on your comment about not doing anything aerobic.

I had a problem with my shoulder that would flare up every time I juggled for more than a couple of minutes. It took me good 4-5 months to get it under control with regular visits to a PT (luckily, covered by insurance). They never told me to stop juggling because the whole point of the exercise was to build up muscles in the right places for the activity that causes pain. I don’t think you can do it without continuing with the activity. Toward the end my PT visits were not very different from gym workouts.

I would just give it a little bit more time and may be talk to a PT to find the right balance of stretching and strengthening the knees (which will also help you to lose a bit more weight :)). I assume you’ve already checked that there is nothing wrong with the knees themselves and the pain is muscle pain.

Keep riding! There is a lot of fun things one can do on a 20" without riding distance.

51

Thanks Igor. Actually I do ‘some’ aerobic but not for long periods of time. I run backwards and skip sideways for about 1/4 mile each. I also walk backwards up and down my street which is pretty steep. Usually 3 times up and down. That last set ‘up’ really works my quads down by the knee and my calves. Each round trip is probably about 10-12 minutes.

I do leg (hamstring) curls with 10lb ankle weights on each leg. 3x10 with a last 4th set holding it for a 10 count. I do this standing and laying down. Sometimes I do leg extensions with the ankle weights but not often. That exercise has fallen out of favor in the ‘rehab’ community in favor of what they call closed chain exercises.

I’m just hoping that the Ortho doesn’t tell me that my years of sports and sitting at a desk have degenerated my knees, and/or that I need an arthroscopic clean up.

52

Ezas,

Please keep us updated on the results of your doctors visit.
Wish you the best.

53

Hang in there Ezas, sounds like relief is coming soon.

Just a few ideas I’ll toss out here:

I also spend a lot of time sitting (programming). The only way I can do this is to have my feet propped up on something- a coffee table, a small ottoman under my desk, anything to keep my legs close to straight most of the time. I’ve noticed my knees don’t care to be bent 90 degrees or more for long periods.

Consider diet- a relative of mine complained of chronic knee pain but then discovered that dairy products were responsible. He quit drinking milk and was able to run again without pain. I imagine there are many so called ‘inflammatory’ foods in our modern diets, and of course which foods cause problems is very personal.

I’ve become a big fan of the ‘barefoot’ running club, never going back. Not only is it more fun but I can farther in my 5-fingers than I could in cushy shoes with no knee pain. There is an adjustment period, the calves will complain at first, but once retrained my body thanked me.

I used to pound the snot out of my knees when I was younger doing various stupid things. But I’m pleasantly surprised with how resilient the human body is. Keep at it!

Cheers,

Gregg

54

Update:

Today I went to a very good sports Ortho. Been in practice for about 20 years. He gave up his surgical practice so he could work with more people and he is an avid cyclist. He is only going to charge me $5 for a follow-up visit in a few weeks.

He did not have a solid diagnosis for me. We talked for a long time and he had me resist him this way and and that way, talked about what I had discovered along the way etc. He probed and prodded. My description matches Patella tendonitis but there is no tenderness when he probes the area. He thinks that my patella is floating around, not really down in the track it’s supposed to ride in.

But I may have discovered what might be the secret. Sitting is not a good thing for my knees. No doubt about it.

It happened about two days ago, an epiphany of sorts. Make a stand-up workstatation.

It’s taken a little diking around to get everything at the right height but I’m typing this standing up. I got the idea from a guy I worked with at IBM who had a stand-up workstation. It also means not being in front of the monitor like a veg for hours and hours at a time. Standing here is a more active activity now and I have to step away from time to time.

In really good news, even before the standup workstation. . . I rode my 20" two nights in a row without further irritating my knees!!! Woo Hoo. They were short rides on flat ground, but they were long enough to feel it in my legs and to get a bit winded. Did I mention Woo Hoo?

I took tonight off from riding just so not to push it too much, though I felt like I could have ridden tonight.

Missing, thanks for the input. Sorry I didn’t see your reply sooner. Your experiences match my own that I guess that our knees have gotten super sensitive to being in a bent position. I have a pretty good diet. Very little dairy, meat only once ever couple of days and pretty good mix of fruits vegetables, and proteins.

Agreed about the resilience of the body.

55

Scha6645,

Since you started this thread some time ago, I was curious about your progress. How are your knees? Do you still have problems with knee pain or did it go away?

Scott

56

ezas, that’s great news, great to hear.

The stand-up workstation is a great idea, I may do that in the future. A tall stool will complement it nicely, as I don’t like standing in one place too long either.

Maybe if we get good enough at idling, we can work and uni at the same time?

57

Sounds like a plan

I’ve never been a fan of standing in one place but there isn’t much I won’t put up with if it will get me back to a normal level of riding.

I rode again tonight and felt just a slight twinge after about 5-6 minutes of riding. I’m still feeling optimistic because I know i’m not sitting and making things worse while not riding.

58

I have fantastic news.

I have ridden 5 out of the last six days with no increase in knee discomfort. I still get pain sometimes when getting up off the floor but not while sitting or standing from a chair, walking up or down steps, or after easy riding (flat ground) on my 20".

The rides are only about 10 minutes on flat ground but it sure beats not riding at all!

I have added some stretches/exercises for the arches of my feet to my greatly scaled back but more focused stretch/exercise routine.

I forgot how much pedaling it takes to make a 20" uni go anywhere.

If someone had told me it would be six months . . . I was thinking 4-8 weeks. As I’ve said before, I made mistakes, but kept changing and adapting what I was doing until I found out what worked and what didn’t. When I asked the Ortho about exercises to do or avoid he said “just keep going with your creativity”. What’s kind of cool is when I find a web site that suggests something that I am already doing. But I’ve yet to see a web site suggest foot bag (hacky sack) for improving femur rotation.

What I’m really waiting for, but taking my time on, is getting back to idling practice, and getting back on the 29". But it is such a joy just to be riding regularly again I don’t mind being really patient.

59

Much better

To Scott,

My knee pains are gone. I still have some knee discomfort when I sharply increase the frequence of my rides and when those rides are very long and/or very technicall.

There were many issues that a physical therapist helped me through. I had IT bad syndrome, piriformis syndrome, very stiff hip flexors and a decreased range of motion in the spine. Since these issues have been resolved, I am working on increasing flexibility in hip flexors, glutes( periformis ), continuing to increase range of motion in lower back and strength training the above areas as well. ( I also need to learn to pace myself better to avoid over training)

I am ~almost~ thrilled that I had knee pains to resolve becuase now my hips, glutes and lower back feel better than ever! Now I don’t notice that I have these body parts which is a great feeling.

60

Scha,

Glad to hear you are making progress. It’s a good feeling to feel the body coming together and seeing the benefit in riding.