Anyone ever had knee tendonitus? My doctor told me that is what I have, it is not that painful just annoying. It feels like the front of my knee tightens after 1 hour or so of riding or running. How long does this shit take to go away? Any help would be great
Do you have patellar tendonitis?
If so, stay on top of it with stretching, massage, rolling, epsom salt baths, etc. I also take Move Free Glucosamine every day. It is something that, when managed properly, settles down. Listen to your body, back off and be patient. It doesn’t get better overnight, but a week or two of treating it, seems to really send the pain away. The key is to keep on top of it, even when you have no symptoms. That seems to be the hardest part.
Hope this helps,
BB
Assuming it’s patellar tendonitis, don’t just ignore it. That’s what I did a few years ago and, instead of just “going away,” it blew up into a real problem. Didn’t go to the doctor until it I could barely make it up and down stairs and a handful of ibuprofen a day wasn’t helping.
Best thing the Dr. did was send me to physical therapy at a clinic specializing in sports injuries. My PT was a pro. He analyzed my flexibility, strength imbalances and gait. Turns out I had developed a muscle imbalance that was causing my knee to shoot to the inside on my down stroke, which meant the patellar tendon wasn’t tracking where it wanted to, which was causing inflamation. Also turns out this old jock wasn’t stretching correctly. PT fixed me up with a regimen of exercises, stretching, ice and ibuprofen. Knowing the root of the problem, I made a subtle change in my pedaling form and haven’t had any trouble since.
In short, if your problem doesn’t clear up pretty quickly, don’t let it get out of hand like I did. If there is an underlying imbalance or form issue, the right person can help you clear it up before it wrecks your training. Hope that helps.
I struggled with patellar tendonitis this winter. Two things: 1. Brace. 2. Strength. I’ve had problems with a maligned patella so I was able to employ a variety of knee braces I had laying around to help solve the problem. My knee really hurt when riding, so I road minimally and extremely light, always wearing a brace. Get a brace with a hole for the knee. I wore the brace every day for about 3-6 weeks and that really helped. In addition, my PT gave me some stabilizing exercises" wall sqauts (30, hold for 5 seconds each) and quad and hip exercises. Lay down, put a 5 lb weight on each leg, lift each leg 30 times slowly, then turn on your side and do this, turn on your stomach, and on your other side. I think that my hip flexors were rather week/ignored, so this helped. Finally, I did leg extensions. My range of motion in my knee was terrible - hurt to raise knee from 90 degrees - so I worked on increasing it with light weights. Now I’m pretty close to normal, and no pain. I can even do the breast stroke kick again.
No stairs or pushing big gears.
Your seat’s too low! Seriously. On the bike a combination of a couple things would do it for the tendon itself. If it’s behind the kneecap or elsewhere then that’s not patellar tendonitis. Anyway, the solution for me was to raise the seat and make sure I did NOT point my toes down at any point in the power stroke. That and stop being a retard and “pushing over the top” which is inefficient and magnifies the forces on the patellar by a big margin. Qrings help a lot with that too. Ice, good quad stretches, etc. On your runs, stop after the first mile and spend 30 seconds stretching your quads, hamstrings and calves. If you get tight elsewhere in a run do the same.
Above all do NOT ignore it. A little tightness isn’t so bad, but it can progress to what I had, which feels like someone taking a really big dull rusty spork and stabbing it into your patellar tendon with every downstroke or every step. Glucosamine/Chondroiten/MSM helps too btw.
Thanks a lot guys, I will start with some of the suggestions. It’s good to know i’m not the only one who has had this before