Knee Pain/Foot Pain Advice

Hi All,

I’m after some advice, I’ll try to sum up my situation in as few words as possible…

I’m 6ft5, weigh about 14 stone on a good day (I find it hard to keep weight on due to a restricted diet). Two or three years ago I ruptured my left ACL while rock climbing in Italy, and it took a very long time for my knee to recover from that, however I still suffer from pain in both knees a lot of the time (usually at the front, below the patella).

They also make crunching noises when I squat down. Sometimes my knees are awesome, but usually not for long, and it’s getting frustrating as I train for Olympic lifting and squat a lot.

I can usually cure the pain by doing various rehab exercises (that I was taught when recovering from my ACL rupture), and cutting out squats/full cleans/etc, but it takes ages (months) and I lose any gain I’ve made. When my knees are good squats seem to help keep them strong and it’s a joy going to the gym and exercising pain free, but after a few months (sometimes less sometimes more) one or both suddenly get worse again.

In the last few weeks I’ve started to get some pain in my left foot behind toe 4, which I think is my metatarsal (don’t think it’s broken though).

Basically, this is my question, could my knee and foot problems be symptomatic of a bigger problem? for example some kind of posterior chain / muscle imbalance? I think I have anterior pelvic tilt (I fail the swayback test).

Can anyone recommend someone that I could see in England that might be able to help? I don’t mind spending lots of cash to see someone who knows what they’re doing, I’ve been living with random knee pains for some time and really want to sort them out once and for all.

I do take a lot of fish oil, and that does seem to make a difference, but not much. Romanian dead lifts do seem to help, power cleans from the hang are good too.

Thanks in advance,

Alex.

I reckon it is my pelvic tilt. Will try to correct it and will report back if anyone is interested.

What is your flexibility like? I personally got a lot of useful information from Joint-by-joint approach to training ( http://www.T-Nation.com/free_online_article//a_jointbyjoint_approach_to_training )
If either your ankle or hip is tight then your knee kicks in to cover the same movement even though it’s not supposed to.

I had bad pain in my left knee (wearing workboots/hiking boots all the time with too much support) and working on ankle mobility helped a lot - I still need to work on my hip flexors though. In any case, try testing out ankle mobility as a start.

In addition to the above article, there is another one somewhere that has some other ankle mobility tests. If I can find it, I’ll post it.