I have had on going interior knee pain for the last several years. I thought it was caused by my cycling but I had something strange happen which is causing me to think that it might be caused by swimming. The long and the short of things is that I am currently training for a marathon so I stopped swimming in mid February but I continued do 1-2 days of biking as well as 5 days of running a week and suddenly my knee pain went away. Thursday I got back into the pool for the first time since February. I ran six miles yesterday and my knee felt but I woke up this morning and the knee pain returned. I cycled this morning and it did not make the pain any worse but it is still there. Here is the workout I did on Thursday if that is useful.
1 x 300 Meters warmup 200 free/100 pull.
1 x 100 meters Breastroke.
6 x 100 meters Free
1 x 100 meters Breastroke.
6 x 100 meters Kick with fins
1 x 100 meters Breastroke.
4 x 100 meters pull with paddlese
1 x 50 meters cooldown.
Breaststroke is well known for causing knee pain. Try cutting out the breast and perhaps substitute a few 100 backstroke instead and see if this helps.
I tried that before and it did not do anything. It seems to be cause by flutter kick.
Well, I guess you could pull with the ankle band, with and/or without the pull buoy and with or without the paddles. This would still give you 4 or 5 different ways to swim freestyle and you can still do the breaststroke as your off-stroke. Also, since you appear to be able to kick breast, you could sub kicking breast in lieu of the kick set with fins.
There are many different ways to utilize the knees during the flutter kick. You might want to post up a quick video of your swimming as well as your stand alone kicking. Without that visual data, this is another speculation thread.
I’ve had similar problems lately with knee pain, and am now fairly convinced it started with swimming as well. The problem I have, I think, is that I am kicking straight down whenever my body is rotated slightly and it is torquing the knee as I attempt to let it bend enough so that it provides some forward propulsion. Some ideas I have is that I shouldn’t be rotating my lower body (only the upper) and/or I am kicking at the wrong time. Any of what I said make sense to anyone? (really need to get my gopro out and actually use it)
Swim with a pull buoy to develop strength and stroke stability for a few weeks and then try going back to kicking.
Could also try kicking/swimming with fins to develop a smoother kicking motion from the hips. If using fins make sure to focus on kicking from the hips rather than jerking with your knee
Breast stroke kick is nearly always the culprit, assuming you are a full on breast stroke swimmer. I was and spent my youth with wonky knees. 300M of breast stroke would not be enough unless you were at race speed.
However have you looked at how you kick freestyle. I swim with a triathlon group and I am quite amazed that some (more than one amazingly) include a breastroke style kick in their freestyle and aren’t aware. Makes lane swimming interesting. A little video work might give you a clue. If you are swimming freestyle for Triathlon (as opposed to pool racing) The use of your legs should be pretty minimal.
You do have a very short warmup and 600m of kicking seems like a very large percentage of your workout how hard do you go at it. Do you time your kick sets. Or conversely change to a dolphin kick. But 600m of that will likely kill you.
I would be tempted to try more pulling and a whole lot less kicking. But I have to admit I may be biased about the pull, as once the wetsuit goes on, the only time I kick is the first 50, the last 50 and anyone who tickles my toes.
How tight is the bottom part of your hamstrings? Stretching hammies with a straight leg and keeping your pelvis upright (vertical) you might be surprised…
Too many possibilities. Breast stroke kick causes lots of problems, especially if you snap it too hard or go to wide. Stiff fins will cause knee problems especially if you try to use a high cadence. Pushing off the wall with more weight on one leg than the other can cause a problem. Having an old injury to the inside quad will cause the outer quads to over compensate and pull your knee cap to the outside, out of the groove and cause tendon pain.
Lots to choose from.
Spend some time strengthening the inner quad and the pain will likely go away. Also get the it bands loosened up, they are likely very tight. It is likely a muscle balance issue.