Runner’s Knee
For the next few blog posts I am going to address a real issue that a patient is facing and share with you my recommendations. I hope you find this information helpful. Please feel free to send me your questions.
LJ: This is a fairly new pain for me that started after yesterday’s run. It isn’t even that much of a pain as it is an uncomfortable annoyance. It surrounds the knee on both of them but is mostly on the bottom to the inner part of the kneecap. There is a lot of cracking when I bend my knee, but that has been better within the past few hours. I’m guessing I just over ran yesterday, but I would like to know how I should treat it now. Is this due to weak surroundings around my knee? If so what would you recommend for building that up? I plan on resting my knee until the pain goes away (a few days) and then running a little shorter (6-8 miles). I am wondering if swimming with a kick board for laps would be good enough strength training or if you would recommend more? Or if I need to hit some weights (which ones), or running high resistance on an elliptical or something? I’m probably babbling here so let me know if I need to clarify anything.
Dr. Beauchamp: I agree, just sounds like you overdid it that day. Strengthening would absolutely help in reducing this discomfort. The best strengthening exercises to do would be some form of leg press/squat, lunges, knee extension, leg curls (hamstrings) and calf raises. You would want to perform your strengthening exercises 3-4x/week doing 3 sets of 10-12 reps. Swimming is good but does not give you the same benefit of weight lifting.
The other component is your running program. Make sure you are not increasing your volume (running by distance or time) by > 10% per week. If you do you significantly increase your probability of injury. If you are new to running, you may even want to back that down a little more.
In the short term, you needn’t worry about the popping/clicking as it will go away with rest. That usually is secondary to swelling (even very small amounts). If the popping/clicking starts to get painful, that would be a reason to go and have a healthcare practitioner take a look at it.
Tags: Knee Pain, Strengthen, Swelling
