I’ve never used wraps so I have no idea. What little I know about the topic is patellar tracking. I had stabbing pain in the lateral aspect of my knee earlier this year. I think it started as hip pain and the chain reaction landed at my knee. During my PT sessions, I would do an exercise and have pain. My therapist would use her hand to put pressure on my patella to make sure it was tracking correctly. The pain instantly disappeared and I was able to do the exercise without restriction.
I appreciate the tips fellas. At the clinic now, hopefully get it assessed before too long. It seems that the Tylenol, Advil and ice combo can do a good job of keeping the pain at bay. Fingers crossed it is just an irritation rather than a tear.
Well, I sat there for an hour and only 3 out of the 15 of us in the sitting area made it through triage so I left. I was hoping to get in and out quickly, but I have too much shit to do to sit there all day.
Ice, rest and drugs will get me through the day for now.
Well, that sucks! I’ve experienced a lot of knee pain in my life and with the exception of one occasion, it was just knee pain. That one other time was a result of subluxing my patella. That one was kind of obvious.
Rest, ice, and some trial and error ought to get you through this.
Ice 15-20 minutes 4 to 6 times a day for the first 24 hours or until swelling subsides. Then use warm compress at the same rate (15-20 mins 4-6x / day) to facilitate blood flow afterwards. I’d go easy on the pain killers too.
Do you have any lumps or tight spots in your calf? Sometimes tightness down there gives me knee issues. Maybe from the knee moving extra to make up for less ankle motion or something.
Hopefully it was a fluke! I really want to dabble in wrapped squatting, so I’m hoping with better wraps and a better wrap job that I can squat pain free.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the case. The wraps may have been enough to throw me out of my familiar squat pattern and cause some knee cave resulting in irritation.
I appreciate the help! I suppose I’m now into the second 24hrs, so I’ll start adding some heat to the area. Would compression, or wearing my knee sleeve help by keeping the area warm or help with possible swelling?
Opposite leg! I’m a mess…
My calf feels fine, but my quads and adductors are quite sore. I may try to hit my entire lower half with a foam roller today to see if this helps the cause! Worth a shot, thanks for another idea.
If it’s still swollen you can still use ice to bring down the swelling. It’s not a hard and fast rule to use warm compress after exactly 24 hours.
Hmm…I’ll be completely honest - the answer I’m going to give you is in a large part based on ankle sprains because that’s what I have most experience with. I imagine the principles to be somewhat applicable to sports injuries in general, but I may be wrong on certain things if applied to other injuries other than ankle sprains. Just keep that at the back of your head.
When you have an acute injury like an ankle sprain, you can wrap the ankle with tight compression initially to prevent it from swelling too much. Compressing it for too long like tight compression the whole day or for hours in an effort to bring down swelling isn’t a good idea because you then restrict blood flow (which facilitates healing).
The purpose of lightly wrapping it in elastic bandage afterwards for prolonged periods isn’t actually for compression but just to help maintain stability and some degree of protection to the joint. I guess it’s also safe to say that light elastic bandages will maintain heat in the area as well, which in theory should improve blood flow (in turn facilitating healing). In theory, swelling is there to facilitate healing by bringing more blood to the area, but excessive swelling is a problem. The excessive swelling is the part we are trying to control.
For the longest time the advice for any injury was to rest it, as in prolonged immobilization, to promote healing. Recent data now says that early mobilization is better for healing both in the short term and long term as long as the ROM is pain free.
Thanks! There is no obvious swelling (tough to see on my knees if there is some minor/moderate swelling or not…they are very unsymmetrical knees to begin with due to past injuries).
I suppose I could use my neoprene knee sleeve more for the support/heat aspect than the compression. If that seems to make it sore (possibly due to inflammation) I could sub it out for some icing.
I do have full ROM, but it definitely isn’t pain free. The knee feels a little unstable when walking around on it, like at anytime it could buckle on me.
I’ll give it a day or two and see if I’m making progress. If not I’ll go in and have it assessed, but I didn’t have time to sit in a waiting room all morning today.
I appreciate you taking the time to offer your thoughts.
Sorry to hear about your knee pain, that stuff sucks. Wraps may have nothing to do with it buuuuut…
I am not a fan of Wraps at all (#RAWorDIE LOL). When I went through my knee issues I did a lot of reading on Wraps vs Sleeves vs Naked and most of the literature suggested Wraps will cover up poor form and weaknesses that will cause more knee pain and injuries. Sleeves will cover it up to a much lesser extent but offer a minimal amount of therapeutic value. While wraps are just Negative Expected value all around except on Squat weight.
Was it on the same leg as the broken foot? Because that would make a lot of sense. Even if it wasnt it still makes a lot of sense. The prior injured leg will be weaker so if it is on the opposite leg that one might be doing some weird things to make up for the weakness. If it is on the prior injured leg that leg could be doing some weird things to keep up.
Injury (not really) update:
So I went into the clinic first thing this morning (9th of 15 in line when it opened, free healthcare = busy & understaffed healthcare).
I got in pretty quick and the doc assessed my knee. Put it through all ranges of motions and felt around the various ligament insertion points to feel for pain or abnormalities.
He concluded that it was a bad case of bursitis(sp?) and possibly some quadriceps tendinitis. I was given some Naproxen (500mg twice daily - he compared it to an extra strength Aleve) and told me to ice the area regularly. This is a case of inflammation vs something requiring healing (according to doc).
He said 2 weeks of taking it easy and icing/drugs should nip this in the bud.
I’d still like to do a meet in wraps and move some heavy weights (+600lbs), but we will see how the next couple trials in wraps go!
It may have just been a matter of me overdoing it after being off squatting for 8 weeks with my foot injury.
You could try doing some myofascial release work on it. Sometimes when you have this trigger point stuff going on it can be quite painful and easy to mistake for something more serious. I’m not saying this is what it is, but it’s worth a shot.
That is where I can see that the muscle/area is swollen. It is tender there, but a little further down (actually against my patella) is where the pain is most concentrated.
I just found my foam roller (wasn’t sure where it ended up in our last mini-move), so I’ll try a little foam rolling to see if I can release some tension from the area to help. Ice has helped quite a bit, and the pain has been much more manageable. I’m still a ways from squatting, or getting up the stairs comfortably, but I’m able to control the fall onto the toilet a lot better than the last couple days. Small victories. Thanks for the tips Chris.
It seems like most people at the meets I’ve been to squat in wraps. My last meet I came first in my category because anyone with a decent squat wrapped up. I think there was only a single other noob squatting full raw. Thinking it is time to chase the competition.
All this being said, I can see next year (or possibly later this year depending on a variety of factors) my focus moving back towards the Strongman scene. Cerberus Strength just teamed up with a local Strongman circuit and they are hosting many more competitions within driving range than previous years.
My powerlifting goals are as follows: Deadlift 700lbs. (Sure a 4 plate bench and a 600lb squat would be awesome, but are not a priority at this time.)
Strongman training can/will be contributing to this powerlifting goal as well, so I could see my training moving in this direction down the road.
Blah blah, my knee hurts, I’ll get over it, sumo is cheating but so is Dbol, I want to deadlift 700lbs.
Standing OHP (SS: Lat Pulldowns x 25, Banded Facepulls x 25)
45 x 10
95 x 5
135 x 5
185 x 3
205 x 3 ← Hoped to hit a triple a little higher than this, but this was damned near max effort.
135 x 12
Seal Rows (SS: Wrist Roller 20lbs x 4sets up and down, Reverse Hyper x 25, Forearm Rice x 25)
135 x 12
185 x 12
185 x 12
185 x 12
Sleep deprived and diet has been all over the map (I seem to have been making my way through a lot of Bud Light recently). Need to try and tighten this up a bit, especially while training is not firing on all cylinders.