How to Find Help w/Knees

Bigger Stronger Leaner Injuries and Rehab
1

I have been trying to get my knees fixed for 8 years. In that time they have only gotten worse.

I’ve been through at least a dozen bouts of PT, seen as many doctors, had several MRI’s, more x-rays, EMG’s.

No one can seem to make any sense of it. I’ll go through a round of PT, and the therapist will essentially say I’m all better, when my legs feel no better whatsoever, and if I actually try to squat, or anything like that, it will feel terrible, and if I keep up with it, I get pain.

It honestly seems like the whole PT industry is a fraud. One big joke. Keep cycling through paitients, and unless they have a simple easy to fix problem, just get them through the month or two cycle of PT, deem them better, and shove them out the door with no interest in actually persisting and figuring out how to actually help them.

I’m incredibly frustrated, and I don’t know where to turn and no one has any good advice.

It seems like I should be able to find a coach, or something like this, a person who can take some actual committed interest in seeing things through, organizing treatments, until I can say, squat 315 comfortably, or something like that.

2

[quote]darsemnos wrote:
I have been trying to get my knees fixed for 8 years. In that time they have only gotten worse.

I’ve been through at least a dozen bouts of PT, seen as many doctors, had several MRI’s, more x-rays, EMG’s.

No one can seem to make any sense of it. I’ll go through a round of PT, and the therapist will essentially say I’m all better, when my legs feel no better whatsoever, and if I actually try to squat, or anything like that, it will feel terrible, and if I keep up with it, I get pain.

It honestly seems like the whole PT industry is a fraud. One big joke. Keep cycling through paitients, and unless they have a simple easy to fix problem, just get them through the month or two cycle of PT, deem them better, and shove them out the door with no interest in actually persisting and figuring out how to actually help them.

I’m incredibly frustrated, and I don’t know where to turn and no one has any good advice.

It seems like I should be able to find a coach, or something like this, a person who can take some actual committed interest in seeing things through, organizing treatments, until I can say, squat 315 comfortably, or something like that. [/quote]

Try this. Do you have a foam roller?

Foam roll your it band and rectus femoris. Make sure you are relaxing. It will hurt. Then.

Get on all fours, keep your lower back in neutral and press your heel back VERY, VERY, VERY slowly. Do not actively squeeze just go super slow pressing your heel straight back. You wont feel it at first but you will start to feel it turn on after 6 or so. It will be subtle at first.

Then do a kneeling hip flexor stretch with one knee on a pad and the other in front of you, lunge postion. Squeeze the glute of the knee that is down. Hold for :40 seconds.

Tell me how it goes, ask more questions if you need to.

3

[quote]Shadowzz4 wrote:

[quote]darsemnos wrote:
I have been trying to get my knees fixed for 8 years. In that time they have only gotten worse.

I’ve been through at least a dozen bouts of PT, seen as many doctors, had several MRI’s, more x-rays, EMG’s.

No one can seem to make any sense of it. I’ll go through a round of PT, and the therapist will essentially say I’m all better, when my legs feel no better whatsoever, and if I actually try to squat, or anything like that, it will feel terrible, and if I keep up with it, I get pain.

It honestly seems like the whole PT industry is a fraud. One big joke. Keep cycling through paitients, and unless they have a simple easy to fix problem, just get them through the month or two cycle of PT, deem them better, and shove them out the door with no interest in actually persisting and figuring out how to actually help them.

I’m incredibly frustrated, and I don’t know where to turn and no one has any good advice.

It seems like I should be able to find a coach, or something like this, a person who can take some actual committed interest in seeing things through, organizing treatments, until I can say, squat 315 comfortably, or something like that. [/quote]

Try this. Do you have a foam roller?

Foam roll your it band and rectus femoris. Make sure you are relaxing. It will hurt. Then.

Get on all fours, keep your lower back in neutral and press your heel back VERY, VERY, VERY slowly. Do not actively squeeze just go super slow pressing your heel straight back. You wont feel it at first but you will start to feel it turn on after 6 or so. It will be subtle at first.

Then do a kneeling hip flexor stretch with one knee on a pad and the other in front of you, lunge postion. Squeeze the glute of the knee that is down. Hold for :40 seconds.

Tell me how it goes, ask more questions if you need to.
[/quote]

I have a lot of doubt. I suspect my issues are due to problems with alignment, not simple lack of glutes working. And I can’t convince any doctor to really look at that.

My issues are not simply pain, and I think that’s what your advice is based on. My issue is that my muscles don’t feel like they’re working properly, and I think this is due to an alignment issue, because neither my muscles nor the alignment of the kneecap looks right, based on my memory of how they used to look. They look deformed with respect to earlier.

This is what makes treatment so hard, because I can’t simply tell the doctors what hurts, because what hurts doesn’t always hurt, and what hurts isn’t always the same thing.

4

darse,

you don’t know what hurts, when it hurts and verbalize differing patterns. If you expect a surgeon to touch you or a physical therapist to appropriately treat the symptoms that you can’t describe, best of luck to you. You have knee pain. That’s it. It’s been here for eight years and you are still here. You don’t need to be fixed by a healthcare practitioner. Modify you activities/exercises to keep symptoms down and progressing towards a goal. Your idea of alignment has no scientific support or grounds to stand on. Muscles don’t stop working because of alignment. They do so because of neurological compromise, peripheral and central. They turn on when your brain sends a message and your nerves provide the juice to turn on.

Bad mouthing professions because you still feel the need to be fixed is why folks like you don’t get better. Here’s an idea: tell the PT you are seeing what they can do for you. All the best…

5

[quote]olifter1 wrote:
darse,

you don’t know what hurts, when it hurts and verbalize differing patterns. If you expect a surgeon to touch you or a physical therapist to appropriately treat the symptoms that you can’t describe, best of luck to you. You have knee pain. That’s it. It’s been here for eight years and you are still here. You don’t need to be fixed by a healthcare practitioner. Modify you activities/exercises to keep symptoms down and progressing towards a goal. Your idea of alignment has no scientific support or grounds to stand on. Muscles don’t stop working because of alignment. They do so because of neurological compromise, peripheral and central. They turn on when your brain sends a message and your nerves provide the juice to turn on.

Bad mouthing professions because you still feel the need to be fixed is why folks like you don’t get better. Here’s an idea: tell the PT you are seeing what they can do for you. All the best…[/quote]

I do know what hurts. But it’s intermittent. And even when it doesn’t hurt I can tell, 100% of the time, that something is wrong.

I’m still here but I can’t do any of the activities I want to do comfortably. EVERYTHING feels awkward.

I CAN’T make progress on anything with my lower legs because they do not function properly.

Tell them what they can do for me? I really don’t know what you’re saying there. I don’t know what they can do for me. Right now, I have one visit left, and I have significantly more pain than when I started.

6

[quote]darsemnos wrote:

[quote]Shadowzz4 wrote:

[quote]darsemnos wrote:
I have been trying to get my knees fixed for 8 years. In that time they have only gotten worse.

I’ve been through at least a dozen bouts of PT, seen as many doctors, had several MRI’s, more x-rays, EMG’s.

No one can seem to make any sense of it. I’ll go through a round of PT, and the therapist will essentially say I’m all better, when my legs feel no better whatsoever, and if I actually try to squat, or anything like that, it will feel terrible, and if I keep up with it, I get pain.

It honestly seems like the whole PT industry is a fraud. One big joke. Keep cycling through paitients, and unless they have a simple easy to fix problem, just get them through the month or two cycle of PT, deem them better, and shove them out the door with no interest in actually persisting and figuring out how to actually help them.

I’m incredibly frustrated, and I don’t know where to turn and no one has any good advice.

It seems like I should be able to find a coach, or something like this, a person who can take some actual committed interest in seeing things through, organizing treatments, until I can say, squat 315 comfortably, or something like that. [/quote]

Try this. Do you have a foam roller?

Foam roll your it band and rectus femoris. Make sure you are relaxing. It will hurt. Then.

Get on all fours, keep your lower back in neutral and press your heel back VERY, VERY, VERY slowly. Do not actively squeeze just go super slow pressing your heel straight back. You wont feel it at first but you will start to feel it turn on after 6 or so. It will be subtle at first.

Then do a kneeling hip flexor stretch with one knee on a pad and the other in front of you, lunge postion. Squeeze the glute of the knee that is down. Hold for :40 seconds.

Tell me how it goes, ask more questions if you need to.
[/quote]

I have a lot of doubt. I suspect my issues are due to problems with alignment, not simple lack of glutes working. And I can’t convince any doctor to really look at that.

My issues are not simply pain, and I think that’s what your advice is based on. My issue is that my muscles don’t feel like they’re working properly, and I think this is due to an alignment issue, because neither my muscles nor the alignment of the kneecap looks right, based on my memory of how they used to look. They look deformed with respect to earlier.

This is what makes treatment so hard, because I can’t simply tell the doctors what hurts, because what hurts doesn’t always hurt, and what hurts isn’t always the same thing.
[/quote]

Dude. I have clients that have had surgery and it looks like their knee cap is pointing in one direction and the foot is pointing in the other. They can get help from this.

Will this definitely work? No way! Nothing is for sure.

But one thing is for sure is this wont hurt you. And the thing about this is that when the hips arent working alot feels wrong, muscles dont seem to work right amongst other things.

But hey if you want to insist you know better then fine. Go for it.

7

[quote]Shadowzz4 wrote:

[quote]darsemnos wrote:

[quote]Shadowzz4 wrote:

[quote]darsemnos wrote:
I have been trying to get my knees fixed for 8 years. In that time they have only gotten worse.

I’ve been through at least a dozen bouts of PT, seen as many doctors, had several MRI’s, more x-rays, EMG’s.

No one can seem to make any sense of it. I’ll go through a round of PT, and the therapist will essentially say I’m all better, when my legs feel no better whatsoever, and if I actually try to squat, or anything like that, it will feel terrible, and if I keep up with it, I get pain.

It honestly seems like the whole PT industry is a fraud. One big joke. Keep cycling through paitients, and unless they have a simple easy to fix problem, just get them through the month or two cycle of PT, deem them better, and shove them out the door with no interest in actually persisting and figuring out how to actually help them.

I’m incredibly frustrated, and I don’t know where to turn and no one has any good advice.

It seems like I should be able to find a coach, or something like this, a person who can take some actual committed interest in seeing things through, organizing treatments, until I can say, squat 315 comfortably, or something like that. [/quote]

Try this. Do you have a foam roller?

Foam roll your it band and rectus femoris. Make sure you are relaxing. It will hurt. Then.

Get on all fours, keep your lower back in neutral and press your heel back VERY, VERY, VERY slowly. Do not actively squeeze just go super slow pressing your heel straight back. You wont feel it at first but you will start to feel it turn on after 6 or so. It will be subtle at first.

Then do a kneeling hip flexor stretch with one knee on a pad and the other in front of you, lunge postion. Squeeze the glute of the knee that is down. Hold for :40 seconds.

Tell me how it goes, ask more questions if you need to.
[/quote]

I have a lot of doubt. I suspect my issues are due to problems with alignment, not simple lack of glutes working. And I can’t convince any doctor to really look at that.

My issues are not simply pain, and I think that’s what your advice is based on. My issue is that my muscles don’t feel like they’re working properly, and I think this is due to an alignment issue, because neither my muscles nor the alignment of the kneecap looks right, based on my memory of how they used to look. They look deformed with respect to earlier.

This is what makes treatment so hard, because I can’t simply tell the doctors what hurts, because what hurts doesn’t always hurt, and what hurts isn’t always the same thing.
[/quote]

Dude. I have clients that have had surgery and it looks like their knee cap is pointing in one direction and the foot is pointing in the other. They can get help from this.

Will this definitely work? No way! Nothing is for sure.

But one thing is for sure is this wont hurt you. And the thing about this is that when the hips arent working alot feels wrong, muscles dont seem to work right amongst other things.

But hey if you want to insist you know better then fine. Go for it.

[/quote]

Please don’t think of my questioning as criticism. Just questions.

It seems like I get that on boards. It seems like just having questions means I’m insulting others intelligence.

Is it the way I write, because if it is, I’m oblivious.

8

[quote]Shadowzz4 wrote:

[quote]darsemnos wrote:
I have been trying to get my knees fixed for 8 years. In that time they have only gotten worse.

I’ve been through at least a dozen bouts of PT, seen as many doctors, had several MRI’s, more x-rays, EMG’s.

No one can seem to make any sense of it. I’ll go through a round of PT, and the therapist will essentially say I’m all better, when my legs feel no better whatsoever, and if I actually try to squat, or anything like that, it will feel terrible, and if I keep up with it, I get pain.

It honestly seems like the whole PT industry is a fraud. One big joke. Keep cycling through paitients, and unless they have a simple easy to fix problem, just get them through the month or two cycle of PT, deem them better, and shove them out the door with no interest in actually persisting and figuring out how to actually help them.

I’m incredibly frustrated, and I don’t know where to turn and no one has any good advice.

It seems like I should be able to find a coach, or something like this, a person who can take some actual committed interest in seeing things through, organizing treatments, until I can say, squat 315 comfortably, or something like that. [/quote]

Try this. Do you have a foam roller?

Foam roll your it band and rectus femoris. Make sure you are relaxing. It will hurt. Then.

Get on all fours, keep your lower back in neutral and press your heel back VERY, VERY, VERY slowly. Do not actively squeeze just go super slow pressing your heel straight back. You wont feel it at first but you will start to feel it turn on after 6 or so. It will be subtle at first.

Then do a kneeling hip flexor stretch with one knee on a pad and the other in front of you, lunge postion. Squeeze the glute of the knee that is down. Hold for :40 seconds.

Tell me how it goes, ask more questions if you need to.
[/quote]

Also, how slow is slow?
10 seconds, 1 minute, more?

9

Dwyane Wade makes several million a year and they can’t figure out how to fix his knee. If there’s not something obviously wrong it’s incredibly difficult to diagnose. People also have different thresholds of pain, you can have a slightly swollen knee and feel like mistracking is painful where as a football player would never notice it.

If you had x-rays, and MRI’s and everyone confirmed that nothing structurly wrong your good in that department. The pain is something you going to have to learn to deal with in order to overcome.

Dealing with it is not simply sucking it up, it’s learning about it and it doesn’t happen over one night. You have to constantly assess whether the pain is something you live with or pain you have to back off from when training. It’s also a leg your going to have to work on for the rest of your life.

First is supplements. It’s pretty standard, and everywhere, glucosamine ,fish oil, arnica… use it I cycle different things every 3 months don’t feel any more or less pain from taking them out. Once I get rid of the pain.

2nd pain managment. Ice numbs nerves. Icy hot makes you not feel shit, heat and rubbing brings blood to the area. If you just had a hard leg session or knee pain flare up, Ice it day 1 rub it day 2 - 3. Learn the movements that cause you to have pain for several days. For me it’s stepping to the side to fast without arching my feet. Learn how your body reacts from the floor to your back. Little things like whether your hip lifts up or down can effect it. The same with arching your feet and pushing your knee outward.

3 Get your leg stronger. Mix double and single leg movements, work from real light weights and work partials sometimes full rom others. But always strengthen that leg. Remember go slow your not in competition with others you just want that leg to be stronger then yesterday even if it’s .0000000001% stronger…

4 A yoga move really helped me, it’s one where with your hands you push your upper leg out and your lower leg in as you bend and straighten your knee. Then focus on really pushing your knees outward on every bend.

good luck

10

What about HA injections? Have you heard anything about them or tried them? I think im going to give them a try in about a month.

11

[quote]Stelo wrote:
What about HA injections? Have you heard anything about them or tried them? I think im going to give them a try in about a month.[/quote]

It’s not arthritis, so I don’t think that will help.

12

I have seen your same post on dragondoor forums. The same complaint. You have been vague about your symptoms, and have bad-mouthed the professionals trying to help you. You have been receiving PT for 8 years, and have been stating (on both forums) that they won’t listen to you. Endless MRI’s, X-rays, etc. ad nauseum. You were asked specific questions regarding your age, previous training, possible injuries–all from people trying to help you on the forums.

You still have not given them a solid answer. Instead, your answers are dismissive. At least, the ones you have given. Keep insisting that you know more than everyone else that is trying to help you, and keep chasing your tail for that magic bullet. Best of luck to you.

13

I dealt with similar issues for about a year and said screw it, scope the knee. My knees as well now look different. x-rays were ok and mri showed a tiny bit of wear and tear but not enough to cause my symptoms. The surgeon removed a plica band that can mimic a meniscus tear. 3 months later im doing better and still improving. They become inflamed and dont show on mri’s unless they are huge. There was a clicking noise in my knees also. Maybe it simething to look into.

14

[quote]BennyHayes wrote:
I have seen your same post on dragondoor forums. The same complaint. You have been vague about your symptoms, and have bad-mouthed the professionals trying to help you. You have been receiving PT for 8 years, and have been stating (on both forums) that they won’t listen to you. Endless MRI’s, X-rays, etc. ad nauseum. You were asked specific questions regarding your age, previous training, possible injuries–all from people trying to help you on the forums.

You still have not given them a solid answer. Instead, your answers are dismissive. At least, the ones you have given. Keep insisting that you know more than everyone else that is trying to help you, and keep chasing your tail for that magic bullet. Best of luck to you.[/quote]

Nice try, but no. My symptoms are vague. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. But the fact remains that the people “trying” to help, usually ignore my questions if my question doesn’t demonstrate my immediate acceptance of what they proposed.

I dismiss irrelevant questions. And I’ve answered all of the relevant question, but people don’t like the answers so they accuse me of being a hypochondirac, despite the fact that I just probably had another partial tear to my quad.

15

[quote]BennyHayes wrote:
I have seen your same post on dragondoor forums. The same complaint. You have been vague about your symptoms, and have bad-mouthed the professionals trying to help you. You have been receiving PT for 8 years, and have been stating (on both forums) that they won’t listen to you. Endless MRI’s, X-rays, etc. ad nauseum. You were asked specific questions regarding your age, previous training, possible injuries–all from people trying to help you on the forums.

You still have not given them a solid answer. Instead, your answers are dismissive. At least, the ones you have given. Keep insisting that you know more than everyone else that is trying to help you, and keep chasing your tail for that magic bullet. Best of luck to you.[/quote]

And the DON’T listen to me. That’s a fact. Many pretend that I’m making progress when I KNOW I’m not. It’s not that hard to tell when someone is bullshitting you, and I get that vibe from PT’s ALL THE TIME. At least the doctors are honest when they tell me they don’t have a clue what’s wrong or how to fix it.