Knee Help!!!

[Satsui_No_Hadou]

Hey,

I'm getting pretty desperate now with my knee problems. As a teen I had discomfort in the kneecaps due to the cartilage being rough, which is a common problem so I'm told. I had physio for it to build the leg muscles up and it was fine, sometimes it comes back for a week or so but then goes away.

Right, now to how it affects/destroys my martial art training. I am completely unable to kneel, at all. If I attempt to kneel my legs will not fold fully, my arse will remain about 4 inches away from my heels and I will feel a huge amount of discomfort in the kneecaps and after standing up this discomfort will remain and can trigger my old problems again. Even sometimes when I sit cross legged I can feel the discomfort in my kneecaps.

This affects many areas of training, to warm ups to takedowns to ground work. I don't want to have to avoid grappling because I find it very useful and good to learn, I want to be able to train my legs to be more flexible.

Does anybody have any experience with this kind of thing?

[righty]

I have had some damage in my knee that caused similar symptoms but not so severe and once it went away it never came back.

You really want to go and see a sports doctor (rather than a physio) to get a good and proper diagnosis, especially if the injury is ongoing and painful.

Increasing strength in the leg muscles can help with knee stabilisation which can prevent pain and injury. I am not sure what this would do to help rough cartilage.

[Yohan]

As far as the kneeling thing, have you tried doing a regular quadriceps stretch??

[Tansy]

see your GP!it also wont hurt (no pun) to get an MRI. May need a little clear up in your knee, you may have bits floating about in there causing pain, it could be ligaments...and take it from the Queen of Knee pain see your GP asap.

Tans