Management of knee pain

What I would do when my knee starts to hurt - as an Osteo who can’t really be bothered going to see someone.

Pain - an inevitability of life.

Knee pain - also, probably an inevitability of life. At some point or another, everyone is bound to do the old person groan as they get out of the chair, car, off toilet, couch or when in the gym.

So how can we learn to manage this ourself?

As an Osteo that, in my humble opinion, is now pretty damn good at self managing my injuries/aliments and niggles - what would I then do if my knee started to hurt?

Lowest hanging fruit

1) I’d check in with myself, my training and life over the last few weeks. I’d ask myself if I have been relatively over doing the activity - maybe a new hike? increased steps? riding my bike more?
2) I’d ask whether I had been under doing the recovery - hows my sleep? am I eating enough? drinking enough water? enough down time? stress management things doing?
3) I’d reflect where my training is at - am I currently trying to do things I have never done before and is it therefore somewhat reasonable that I have a slight niggle in my knee?

If I have answered yes to any of the above, I’d then give it some time, carry on with my every day activities, reassess the outlier in the above, and review in a week or two - it is very likely to have resolved after this point.
But it hasn’t you say? Well…read on.

assessment

4) Is it swollen? No? Great. This means I can probably keep going and it will continue to get slowly better over time, as long as I don’t continually piss it off.
Yes? Alright, I will need to give it some relative rest.

What is relative rest you ask? Well, every injury has something that really ticks it off. In the knee it might be when it bends all the way, when we bounce off it (ie. running), or when we flick it into a straight position really hard (kicking a ball). Which thing am I doing to tick it off? For me, it is usually over doing the squatting movements. So I’d either lighten the load, change to a single leg variation/ change the bar position, change the speed of the movement etc. etc. I’d look for success. Success in this setting would be, the pain isn’t getting worse, the swelling is also going down over time.

Why would it swell? Swelling isn’t a bad thing. In fact it is good and necessary for the body to heal. Swelling is the body spewing the healing ‘chicken soup’ into the area we call inflammation. It is a great, wondrous thing that is chock full of healing mediators that allow the body to slowly but surely fix up where every sore thing is in the area. In the case of the knee, it’s usually cartilage, but there’s also menisci, ligaments, tendons, muscles, joint capsules & bone, that all might result in an inflammatory response (Swelling). It’s our job not to piss it off, so it can actually do it’s job - fix the thing.

treatment

5) If it is swollen or hasn’t gone away in 2 weeks I would - reluctantly - go and see someone about it. I tend to put my blinkers on a bit and sometimes can ignore things. A set of eyes on that isn’t my own, will miss things that I have chosen to ignore about myself. A bit of denial really, I am Superman after all. As if my Kryptonite could be something as measly as a deadlift.

When seeing them, there would be hands on techniques to get some relief, prescription of exercises for rehab and management plan set out. With the emphasis of management PLAN - if there isn’t one, then we are essentially paying for an over priced massage.

summary

If you’ve tried a novel thing, and pulled up a bit sore, try to reflect on what your body is trying to tell you. It’s usually pretty obvious.

If it swells or kicks around for 2 weeks, then you’re due for a check up and need to remove the provocative activity, at least for a period of time. Let the body do it’s thing.

The body has an innate ability to heal - it’s your job to get the fuck out of the way and let it do it.