My knee

My knee has been such a leading issue in my training the previous year that I think it needs its own post to lay out the whole story, and to fill in the blanks in other posts with my many references to ‘my knee’. This post might even give you some idea for dealing with your own injuries.

Going back 16 years (to the age of 16), I broke my ankle. It took quite a bit of physiotherapy to get it moving again; I only ever regained about 90% of its full ROM, and the foot arch was dead flat from that point on.

Fast forward a few years and I found I could wear vibram5 fingers with no foot pain (I was getting foot pain in most other shoes); however I did hyper flex the large toe on that foot (most likely because I was missing ankle ROM). This old injury can pop up every now and then too (Like during this beach hike).

Fast forward some more to around 2013, I injured the knee loading a truck at work. It was some sort of meniscus issue, eventually it calmed down but was never quite right after that. By 2016/2017 it got to the point where I decided I couldn’t jump hard anymore. Not that it would definitely hurt, but the risk was too high, if I did hurt it, the knee would be swollen for a week.

By 2020 it had been getting worse, it would hurt more often and I was struggling to figure out what was setting it off. Sometime it was just getting in or out of a car with ‘bad form’.

The knee prep series from Gymnastic bodies seemed okay while it wasn’t sore, but wasn’t possible if it was aggravated. Hindu squats and toe lifts (lift big toe only, then the other four toe only, not moving the other each time), were okay, but didn’t seem to help a lot. Ryan Flaherty’s 7 way hip (Google it, or check out Tim Ferriss' podcast) seemed useful to help stabilise the hip, but I got to the point where I felt like I could tick that off as “not the issue”. I tried various knee strengthening movements but I always felt like I was strong enough in all of them (nothing ever stood out as a weak point), and couldn’t find a standout which seemed like it was helping.

Then after my 69km run at the Blue Lake 24 hour run (there will be a full post on this) my knee was trashed (surprising I know). It took a long time to calm down and for me to find something that seemed to help. Currently I’m finding foam rolling (particularly VMO, IT band and quad) appears to be helping and getting me out of pain.

Before finding the foam rolling, I even went to a podiatrist and got a set for inserts to support my arches. These were hell the first week, but seem to really be working now. This was at odds with my natural method/ancestral health thinking, but I had to try something to get out of pain. I figured my foot was flat post injury and I wasn’t likely to ever to be able to fix it on my own so I needed help.

I can make and arch, but mostly it sinks

The next step this year in getting help is going to be seeing an Osteopath which a friend of mine has suggested. (Caveat – I don’t know of the science behind Osteopathy, but it looks like it will be some skilled manual therapy and a practised look at my mobility/positions/structure. I don’t see much downside here and a lot of potential upside) My current thinking is that 16 years of less than perfect loading has not been kind to my knee, so any help I can get to fixing this going forward I will be looking into.

One last thing at say here, when I started this blog nearly 10 years ago I would not have had the money to pay for a Podiatrist or Osteopath (maybe I could have got them at the time of injury under ACC but I was 16, and could have no idea how it would affect me in the future). So I totally understand not being able to afford this. If you are in a similar situation, I would suggest you do everything you can to get your feet right (Check out Chris Duffin - foot love), make sure your hips are strong, stretch and foam roll. Then if you’re still having trouble find a professional who can help, sometimes we need help.