Someone please cure this patella tendonitis

Bigger Stronger Leaner Competitive Bodybuilding
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i’ll make this fast. January 2001, I was playing b-ball, dunked, landed perfectly normal, but felt my left knee give out on me. Thought nothing of it (It hurt really bad but I thought it would be fine in a week)never got better, instead it got worse and would give out every now and then. Went through one doc who said, just rest and Ice it, did that for a month, no progress, did it again, gained lots of weight in the process.

By November 2001, switched doctors (second opinion) he told me to go through therapy while taking some kind of knee steroid, never got better (March 2002), decided to have surgery (gained 35 pounds from Jan 2001-March 2002), all this time Iwould wait a month then give it a go, everytime that tendon would hurt, so finally had Surgery on May 8th, started rehad 3 weeks later, after surgery, my left thigh lost a lot of mass. Anyway been doing rehab since. They say that when I build that quad up, it will relieve the stress put on the tendon and it will go away, knee was feeling fine in July, doc said I could start running. I ran a mile a day for a week, knee started hurting, doc says back off, no running, just lift weights (quad exercises, eccentric strengthening, stuff like that), been doing this since July, I’ve lost 10 pounds and turn a lot of that fat into muscle thanks to rehab and mygym membership. Anyway, I met with doc late August. Ive gotten stronger and my thigh has gotten stronger but it hasn’t caught up with my right leg in terms of mass. Doc says by mid october, i should be ready to run again.

Anyway I’ve missed 2 b-ball scholarship opportunities because of this and if it ain’t better by Late october, I’m gunna miss out on another. I’ve thought about using steroids but I’ve steered clear of it. Right now it feels a little weak, I know it’s prolly because I haven’t run on it but man, it has to be better by now. Vince Carter had the same exact surgery and he’s doing fine now.

Bottom line, has anyone else had this experience and what’s the best method to use with fighting this ailment, thanks. Sorry if it’s too long.

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bump

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I’ve had the same injury and have been dealing with it since my mid teens. I’ve had a new type of cortisone treatment done on it where they put the cortisone on pads and put the pads on your knee and send electricity through the pad to get the cortisone deep into the knee. Also I had physio for the last 3 weeks and they showed me some eccentric exercises that really seem to help. Make sure you use ice after any kind of activity and keep doing eccentric exercises to strengthen the tendon. If you want details of exercises - lemeknow.

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Sounds like your current doc has you on the right path. I have it in both knees, and once I stopped playing bball and started lifting (specifically legs) it got better. When you do start running again, you need to take it slow man. Don’t run every day. Ease back into it. Other than that, keep doing what you are doing, it sounds like it is working.

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What exactly was the injury? I had knee surgery 2 years ago to remove cartillage (I managed to break off a 2 cm piece and it was floating around in my knee). I took almost a year before I could squat with any real weight, but now I back to full strength. Based on an earlier post about your leg routine, you are pushing it too hard, tying to rush the healing process. It won’t work, and you have probably set yourself back a few monthes. If you are still doing that leg routine, stop. Do a search here on T-mag for leg routines/exercises. Get out of the smith machine, and if your trainer can’t show you how to do a real squat, find someone who can.

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Big Chief, Chris, Ko, thanks for the replies.

Big, I would like to know in depth what you are talking about. About the cortizone treatment, I think I had something like that before surgery, it was called Iotose, where they put a patch on the knee with the steroid and sent positive and negative charges there, it didn’t help, my doctor, after he performed the surgery said that my tendon was so worn out that surgery was the only option.

Chris, yeh the doc I got is a good doctor, he said I could start running and I was so eager to get back in shape that I was running every day even though it was weak trying to get in shape and I aggravated it. I’m just hoping that in a month when I start running, it will be healed.

Ko, the injury is patella tendonitis, wear and tear of the tendon from overuse. The sudden pain I felt when I hurt it was it finally giving out after years of playing basketball, especially on concrete when I was younger. The scar tissue never healed so the doctor removed the unhealed scar tissue from my tendon. I’ve been doing those leg exercises because I’m dying to add mass to my thigh muscle. I’m going to stop doing this for a couple of weeks and just work on eccentric exercises and the leg press, that’s it. I also stopped the Smith machine b/c it does add pressure to the knee.

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Juity, I haven’t had any real problems with my knees, but I have had other types of tendonitis. A couple of things helped:


First, concentrate on those negative exercises. There’s an article in the T-Mag archives by Peter Blanchonette that talks about using negatives as a cure, and in my case it certainly worked very well. I had tendonitis in both forearms for about two years. It would come and go, then it came and stayed. I tried all sorts of things for it, but the negatives worked when almost nothing else did.


I say “almost” because the other effective thing I tried was Wobenzyme. It’s a supplement that helps with tendonitis (among other things). It’s a bit pricey, but well worth it. You can find it on the Net. The only thing about Wobenzyme is that there have been some comments lately that the product quality might not be as good as it once was. However, I’d still give it a shot if I were you. Doing a search here on the forum will bring up several threads with more info.


Finally, as ko said, you need to give it more time. Tendonitis takes a LONG time to heal, even at your age, and just because Vince Carter healed in X amount of time doesn’t meant hat you’re going to. Remember, he has access to the best sports docs in the business.


Hope this helps.

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Ya know what char, I think I’m gonna try the Wobenzym. I have nothing else to lose but how long is too long. It’s been a long time since the surgery, damn near 5 months. Also, when you folks do the eccentric exercises, do you do both eccentric and regular lifting or just eccentric exercises. I don’t know if I should do both or just eccentric for the next few weeks.

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Give DMSO a try, has worked wonders for many.

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Just the negatives. So on a leg extension (this is just for example, I’m not recommending that you actually use this exercise for rehab), you would take a light weight, raise it with only the good leg and then lower it using only the bad leg. But you really should read the article for more info.


Also, you’ve got the correct spelling of “Wobenzym”. It’s not spelled with an “e” on the end - like I had it in my original post. Sorry for the mistake!

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I’m sorry but what is DMSO. I did a search online for it and no one gave a straight answer for it. They said it’s for nonmedicinal use or some $hit, but that’s why I need it, for medicinal use. Plus no one said it’s for tendonitis. I’ll try a search on T-MAG and see what I find.

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I have a weak platella tendon that sometimes gives me trouble since my doc used a piece of it to repair my ACL. Hindu squats, made popular by Matt Furey, have helped me to strengthen it up, and also restored paid free full ROM. Good luck.

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Read “pain” above, not paid. Sorry.

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Juity, I had the same cortizone therapy done on my knee as you did and I agree that it didn’t seem to do much. However IF I do the eccentric exercises that physio taught me it helps a great deal. This is what I did to try and strengthen the tendon and get rid of the pain. Every night I stand on two phone books, and while balancing on one leg, (and the other leg out in front of you) slowely lower the bad leg and basically step off the books (or whatever) really slowely. It is crucial to keep your bad knee pointed/in-line with your pinky toe – you almost have to push your knee out a bit when you do it. It is also crucial to keep your hips completely straight across. If you do it and you feel your body twisting or giving out even slightly drop down a phone book – you are too high. Hope that makes sense. I’ve been going down stairs lately and it works great. It is important not to do any concentric movements at all on your bad leg! If you step back up on the phone book do it with your good leg. Another exercise that has helped is to lean against a wall with your back and slowly squat down with all your weight on your bad leg (remember to push your knee out and in line with your pinky toe and keep your hips in line – then when you hit parallel shift your weight to your good leg to squat back up. Don’t use any weight for any eccentric exercise until you feel no pain.
If you feel pain during an exercise then stop and re-evaluate what your doing.
It seems like a couple of sissy exercises but you will feel a lot better the next day. Hope that helps.
Oh – and don’t forget to ice it every night after the exercises.

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Well thanks for all the help fellas. I’ve taken everything into consideration (Wobenzym, Hindu Squats, the home exercises with the phone books-Do you do those workouts every night)and I also got one more possible solution I just looked up. It’s called ART (Active release therapy). I found a practitioner about 30 minutes from my house and I plan on calling him as soon as I get my car fixed (Today or tomorrow)to set up an appointment.

With my condition (Post surgery and all) do you think it’s a good idea to do ART, since they DID try to clean up my scar tissue during the surgery or do you think this may just be arthritis because the leg is still weak? From what I’ve been reading up on, ART sounds like a good idea. I’ll probably give it a shot.

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You are the guy who posted that leg workout a couple of weeks ago consisting of something like 50 sets for quads alone aren’t you? This marathon workout coupled with running could be a reason why your knee is not getting better. You’ve received several good suggestions. I would give the ART a shot and if you can’t get the Wobenzym at least find out what it contains and go down to your health food store and buy the enzymes in the component parts. Also make sure you always, always warm up really well before stressing that knee. I had tendonitis in both knees for 2.5 years that never went away until i started doing 20 minutes of jump rope before each workout.

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Yeah, I have gotten a lot of good advice and believe me, I’ve tried everything, except the Wobenzym b/c I haven’t gotten to ordering that stuff. I started doing Hindu squats Yesterday. About the workouts though, I haven’t run since July. I had surgery in May and my doc cleared me to start running in July, but I probably jumped back in too fast b/c my knee wasn’t strong enough and I ran like everyday for a week. The workouts, I only did temporarily because I was trying to get my left leg stronger since it was so weak you know and it was only 38 worksets, someone said 83 but it was only 38. For the past 3 weeks though, I’ve let off the leg workouts and have only been doing eccentric exercises.

I’ve been asking for all this advice lately because my last check up was August 30 and my doctor cleared me to start running by late october and it’s getting to that time. Anyway, Kelly you say you Jump rope to warm up, doesn’t that aggravate it since your jumping up and down on your knees?