An Athletes Guide to Chronic Knee Pain – Anthony Mychal

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An Athletes Guide to Chronic Knee Pain – Anthony Mychal

An Athlete’s Guide to Chronic Knee Pain

Got patellar tendonitis? Jumper’s knee (patellar tendonosis)? How about patellar mistracking? Chondromalacia? Or maybe your knees are always in pain, for reasons you don’t quite know yet?

I’m going to tell you two things. If you’re an athlete with chronic knee pain, you NEED to know these two things.

First, let’s start with a story.

You have a friend named Kong. Kong likes touching hot things. Don’t ask why. That’s just Kong. He’s a weird guy.

You’re a good friend. You don’t want Kong to burn himself, so you scour his house, getting rid of everything that can potentially burn him. Kong lives happily ever after, right?

Eh…

Not really. Because Kong is limited to a “fake” world. If he ever returns to the real world, he’s gonna’ get burned. It’s possible to live pain free in a fake world without really being healed.

AVOIDING THE PROBLEM ? FIXING THE PROBLEM

The root of Kong’s problem is his wacky tendency to touch hot things, not necessarily the pain he experiences as a result of his strange behavior.

Pain is just one piece to a much larger puzzle.

What this means to you.

So here you are. You can’t run. You can’t jump. You can’t squat. Even standing up from the toilet makes you wince. Your knees are in shambles.

And there you are. In bed. Waiting for a miracle. Waiting for the physiology gnomes to tap your knee with a magical star wand.

Because, well, that’s everyone recommends. Rest. Rest. Rest some more. Rest. Rest. Rest. Rest. Rest.

But “rest” is the cheap answer.

You can avoid the sports and activities you love and feel OK, but when you go back to them…? You get burned.

Kong’s paradox.

Most rehab theories are based on an arbitrary concept of being damaged one day, resting for a little bit, then being magically healed overnight.

This is true and false at the same time. Your body is amazing. It can heal itself. But as long as you still have the behaviors that forced the damage, you’re going to continually breakdown.

This is Kong’s paradox.

You can eliminate the pain (feel healthy) without fixing the root of pain.

And if you continually ignore the root of the pain? Your short-term inflammation (knee pain, tendonitis) turns into long-term tissue degeneration (jumper’s knee, tendonosis).

Pain isn’t hardcore or manly. It’s not natural. Pain is a sign that something is wrong.

The first thing you need to know is this: rest isn’t going to permanently fix your knee pain. You have to fix the root of your problem, and the root is (not surprisingly) the second thing you need to know.

You can’t make the following logical mistake: thinking your knee is the thing that’s broken because the knee itself is the thing in pain.

Take a look at the pictures below. I cropped them out of some random YouTube videos.

Both of these guys are doing vertical jumps. The guy on the left claims a 30? vertical jump. The guy on the right, 50?. (Which is very high, so let’s just say 40? to account for internet inflation.) Honestly, the output doesn’t matter much.

Aside from the raw numbers, there’s a difference between the two: I consider one a knee pain candidate, and the other a knee pain conqueror.

Below are more still shots from YouTube, but with NFL combine athletes (a little less random than, well, random YouTubers).

Notice how their body positions are more similar to the guy on the right in the first picture? It’s no coincidence. (Rule 39: There is no such thing as coincidence.)

What’s it mean?

You might be wondering, “I see the difference, but what the heck does this got to do with chronic knee pain?”

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. You’ve heard that saying before, right? Makes sense. But if you focus on the fire, you arsonist running out of the back door and breaking for the woods.

Chronic knee pain is a global phenomenon, so you have to zoom out and see beyond the knee itself.

But before I do that, I want to tell you about who I am and how I know all of this.

My name is Anthony Mychal. I’ve written for some fitness magazines and websites, like T-Nation, Schwarzenegger.com, Greatist, Elite FTS, Onnit, and STACK.

Some of the articles I wrote were about knee pain. But I’m not here to tout my credentials. I’m here to show you something.

One of the questions I’m asked most: do your knees still make that noise? And I get asked this because back in 2009 I put a video on YouTube of my snapping, crackling, and popping knees.

I was Googling for answers. I was posting on forums. I had just about every chronic knee pain possible. Tendonitis. Jumper’s knee. Tracking problems.

Here’s the part where I’m supposed to smile and say, “And I haven’t had an knee problems since I’ve found this magical cream!” But that’s not true… I still struggle with knee pain because I ignored my initial tendonitis. I thought I could fight through the pain.

Pshhhh. Ain’t nothing gonna’ stop me from playing my sports and lifting. I’ll get through this pain. Yeahhh. Only the weak care about pain.

And then my tendonitis turned into tendonosis. In other words, my short-term inflammation became long-term tissue degeneration.

If you love your sports and activities, the goal is simple: keep playing. That’s why you play through pain. But when you play through pain you cause long term problems that put you out of the game.

You’re responsible for maintaining your vehicle.

The kicker in my story? It wasn’t like I totally ignored my pain. I followed most highly touted advice, like resting, popping pain pills, and icing. One doctor even told me that my knees would never be quite “right” ever again.

I’ve wasted over $100 in medical fees and supplies in less than one year just trying to feel somewhat healthy. That’s not mentioning the braces, creams, and supplements.

I even tried to train my way out of my pain with leg extensions and leg curls. If you’re in as deep as I was, you’ve probably also done your fair share of terminal knee extensions.

All of these things made my knee worse.

Nothing worked.

Until…

The moment everything changed.

Is when I started to treat my knee as a victim, not a culprit. Your leg is made up of a ton of muscles and is controlled by three main joints: the hip, the knee, and the ankle. Anytime you move, force flows through these three joints. Up the chain, down the chain. The knee is the middle man.

So picture an assembly line. Three guys. You’re the middle guy. What happens when the guy to your right stops working? All his load gets thrown onto you. What happens when the guy to the left stops working? All the work you’re trying to do piles back up onto you.

There’s one equation you gotta’ remember. (Even if you hate math.)

Hips + Feet = Knees

And it just so happens that athletic ability follows a similar equation.

Hips + Feet = Athleticism

Remember those pictures from above? The body positioning? Stud athletes have similar body positions during exercises because they drive movement from similar muscles and structures. And those muscles and structures are also key in chronic knee pain.

Knee pain and athleticism.

If you have pain squatting (back squatting, front squatting, any kind of squatting), running, or jumping, you need to learn how to move more athletically.

This doesn’t just happen. You have to make it happen. You have to retrain your body. And this is what An Athlete’s Guide to Chronic Knee Pain is all about: a program designed to fix chronic knee pain that delivers a pleasant athletic side effect.

An Athlete’s Guide to Chronic Knee Pain is actually two programs smashed together.

The first is Theories and Solutions for Patellar Tendonitis, Jumper’s Knee, and Patellar Tracking Problems. It digs deeper into the relationship between the ankle, knee, and hip.

There is an eight week foundation program that builds muscle activation patterns and mobility with a specific selection of movements.

The goal is to kick muscles and movement patterns into gear that’ve long since been sleeping, and then build a ton of endurance to be able to maintain ability in those muscles forever and ever, no matter how fatigued you are.

The second is Increasing Strength and Explosiveness Through Barbell Exercises, Leaps, and Bounds. It transitions the newly found endurance and activation patterns into barbell exercise and athletic movement.

It builds positional awareness and correct activation patterns within those positions. It also teaches you how to absorb and propel force within those same positions. This second program is full of linked up videos to help you learn.

Both of these programs are crammed together. No dual fee. No leg extensions. No leg curls. No bed rest. Just a seriously comprehensive reconstruction of athletic and pain free lower body movement from the sand to the sky. 180 pages filled with information, pictures (exercises, stretches), and videos.

And some more bullet points because bullet points are cool:

• It promotes lifelong change so that there is no regression in the rehabilitation
• It constructs athletic movement so that your knees not only get better but your foundation for athleticism is enhanced
• It includes a safe progression of exercises with little necessary equipment so you can do the training anywhere
• It cures chronic knee pain so you can run amok, jump around like a wildebeest, or squat like a maniac
• It relieves you of the mental anguish of being constantly down and out because of your chronic knee pain
• It’s great for prehabilitation because it reworks movement to put less pressure on the knee=

Considering I bought Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo Switch for just about double the price of An Athlete’s Guide to Chronic Knee Pain, I’d call it a game of priorities.

So consider what your knees are worth to you. Seriously. Think about it. What does your knee let you do that you love doing? How does it feel not being able to do it?

When I was unable to move and trick and lift, I lost myself. Don’t lose yourself. Give your knees the care they need so that you can do whatever makes you feel alive. So that you can do the things you love doing — the things that form your identity as a person.

That expensive treadmill is nice…if you’re healthy enough to use it. That monthly gym membership? Those kettlebells and barbell you just bought? All nice. But only if you can use them.