Any advice for avoiding knee injury

[PotomacCyclist]

When I used to be completely sedentary (or nearly completely), I would frequently get muscle soreness. Carrying groceries was tough. Carrying the laundry was tough. Lifting up a box was tough. Exertion like that would cause my muscles to get very sore for hours. When I tried swimming a decade ago, it took me 10 minutes to recover after a single lap. (That may have been partly due to improper breathing technique. But it also had to do with poor aerobic endurance.) Believe me, I felt very “old” back then.

But the combination of smart strength training (NOT bodybuilding) and smart aerobic training, along with a decent diet (not perfect but not the junk food mess that so many people eat, and that I sometimes ate myself in some months in the past) makes me feel much younger. While you do lose your top end potential after your early or mid 20s, most of us are nowhere near that potential. That means that if you change from being sedentary and eating junk food, to being active and eating a (mostly) clean diet, you can definitely feel, look and BE much younger physically in your 30s and 40s. I’m far more fit now than I was in my early 20s. That’s because I set the bar pretty low back then. (My idea of working out was 10 minutes on a treadmill, keeping it slow enough that I DIDN’T break a sweat. Don’t ask me why I used to do that. I haven’t figured out myself. And I would only do that running for two weeks a year. That does basically nothing for your overall long-term health.)

Even when I turned it around and tried to become active again, I was an injury-prone mess. The injuries kept coming, one after another: clicking in the knee, patellofemoral syndrome, ITBS, lower back tightness, burning quads after semi-long rides, exercise-induced compartment syndrome. It didn’t stop until part-way into my 2nd year of doing all this. Then I started doing a better job of strength training, and I planned my overall training far better. The result? All the overuse injuries stopped happening, at least for several years.

I did experience quad issues last year. It started when I underfueled for long workouts in the late winter, then got sick. That left me undertrained. I pushed it at the Air Force Ass’n Cycling Classic, despite my lack of training. Then a couple days later, I did a hard run hill workout. That blasted my quads, and not in a good way. I never felt the same again for the rest of the year, because I never took enough time off to heal up completely. After I limped through my limited race schedule, I didn’t run for a few months and I did very little biking. I healed up completely after that and I haven’t had any quad issues, or any other issues this (other than motivational issues).

I’m not going to say my results are typical. They are just one data point. But my experiences overlap with those of many others. I can say for a fact that age is not the defining factor for a non-elite amateur. (Age does matter for an elite/pro athlete, but I’m nowhere near that level. I never developed much of my individual potential in my early 20s either.) By any marker, I am more fit than I was a decade ago. In terms of strength, in terms of aerobic endurance, balance, and just how I feel on a daily basis. Back then, my back would always hurt after sitting for a couple hours. Now that does not happen. Many reports indicate that most cases of back pain are caused by core muscle weakness/imbalance, not because of traumatic injury or age (although obviously there are some cases of traumatic injury). Back then, it hurt quite a bit to carry heavy grocery bags. A lot of things would make my muscles sore.

But none of that affects me nearly as much now. I recover much more quickly from tougher physical exertion. It’s the training and the diet. I’m older than I was back then, but I feel like I’ve been aging in reverse.

[dkel]

I find all of this interesting, and I take all advice with a grain of salt, knowing that my experience may not match others’. I think information is power, though, particularly when seeking professional advice, as it makes the interaction clearer from the start. For my own part, I hope all of my problems have to do with bike fit, and that’s where I’m going first. After that, if I still have trouble, it will be a visit to a doctor, and on from there based on their recommendations. I don’t think my troubles are particularly bad, as a couple of ibuprofen causes me to feel fine, but I hate taking that stuff–particularly on a regular basis. Ibuprofen doesn’t treat underlying pathology, either, so it’s not a solution. Anyway, thanks, everyone, for the advice. I value all of it!

[GovernorSilver]

I have no experience in cycling specific strength training, but will just add that this is a nice pistol squat tutorial, since pistol squats were mentioned:

http://gmb.io/pistol-squat/

It’s different from a lot of other pistol squat tutorials in that GMB favors a bottoms-up approach. I learned how to do it with the more common top-down approach. My bike has been in the shop for several days now so I practice the GMB style pistol squat on the days that I would have been commuting by bike.

Other random thought: I find sitting in “seiza” (Japanese sitting position used in judo and aikido classes, and I think some other Japanese art forms like tea ceremony) for about a minute to be sufficient for stretching my quads after a ride, but it may not be for everyone.

[Tania]

Suggesting that someone do pistols just proves my point about the risk of Internet advice. It’s like suggesting someone go downhilling at the Shed after they’ve ridden Laurel Hill once. On a hybrid. It’s laughable and potentially dangerous.

GS – that’s a go-to stretch for one of the top U.S. weightlifters! He said it’s helped him recover after a back injury and stay injury free.

[PotomacCyclist]

Why? You could say the same exact thing about suggesting that someone ride in city traffic. It’s also “potentially dangerous.”

Of course a pistol squat is a more advanced move. I think most people will recognize that pretty quickly without a specific warning. So? Riding in city traffic can be thought of as a more advanced type of riding to many, when compared to riding on separated bike trails (even though there are also hazards on trails, from people speeding to making aggressive passes or runners making sudden U-turns).

Suggesting that someone walk to a Metro station is also “potentially dangerous.” I’ve actually had many more “injury near misses” while walking in crosswalks to and from Metro stations in DC/VA/MD than I have by riding or from doing pistol squats.

Whenever the topic of strength training comes up, I usually try to emphasize the importance of warming up and of proceeding gradually, not increasing intensity too quickly. It’s the same as with any physical activity, including cycling. If someone suddenly jumps from doing 5-mile rides to 40-mile rides or adds several tough hills when they don’t have much experience with hills, that can also pose an injury risk. Overdoing any physical activity also poses greater injury risk, but that applies to just about any type of physical activity. So we shouldn’t talk about any of this?

[GovernorSilver]

@Tania 121498 wrote:

Suggesting that someone do pistols just proves my point about the risk of Internet advice. It’s like suggesting someone go downhilling at the Shed after they’ve ridden Laurel Hill once. On a hybrid. It’s laughable and potentially dangerous.

GS – that’s a go-to stretch for one of the top U.S. weightlifters! He said it’s helped him recover after a back injury and stay injury free.

Neat! I stumbled upon seiza as a quad stretch when I was working through the cool-down sequence for GMB’s Parallettes One program. The first stretch in the sequence is a wrist stretch while sitting in seiza. The warmup sequence is also done almost entirely in seiza, except for the cat streches at the end of the sequence. We get into tuck position a lot in Parallettes One, hence warming up in seiza.

GMB’s pistol squat tutorial starts by explaining that you need to be able to do a full-range two-legged bodyweight squat first – you need the strength and flexibility to do that before starting your pistol training. A video on how to do this two-legged squat is provided. The pistol squat training follows a progression of skills, starting with rolling into a two-legged squat, then rolling into a one-legged squat (bottom position of the pistol), then starting to rise out of the one-legged squat (but only after you’re consistently able to roll into and out of the one-legged squat under control), etc. The tutorial also helps you manage expectations with a short FAQ – no it’s not guaranteed to improve your vertical jump, no you don’t need to squat X number of pounds in the barbell back squat, etc. I’m sure the leg strength gained from working on pistols will benefit in some way, but how to use it for a cycling specific strength training program – or even whether to use it at all in such a program – is the domain of a better qualified trainer than me.

[PotomacCyclist]

Maybe I need to revise my statement about having near misses in crosswalks. What about walking in grocery stores?!

I went for an hour-long run, then a short CaBi ride as a cool-down. I haven’t run in almost a week so I’m a little sore. No big deal.

It’s hot out so I decide to get water and some food at Whole Foods. As I said, I was a bit fatigued so I was walking slowly. It’s a grocery store, not a freeway. Then I feel my heel hit something and my ankle partially rolls over. I turn and see some woman had just run straight into me with a 3-wheel stroller because she is in a rush. She says sorry briefly, then rushes on. My Achilles starts to get a little sore, partly because I just ran. That’s about the worst time to roll your ankle or yank your Achilles.

She returns to the store a little later. I tell her that she twisted my ankle. She says she didn’t see me and that I was walking slowly. That’s true but I say that it’s a grocery store, not a freeway. I’m not wearing an invisibility cloak. The store is brightly lit. The store is still busy and I was standing in the middle of a wide open area. She tells me to “quit whining like a little girl.” What the &*#?

Accidents happen but this was entirely due to her recklessness. If I get injured while running, that’s on me. I can accept that. But I find it much harder to accept a near tear of my Achilles because someone is in a rush and races through a grocery store with a stroller, without bothering to look ahead.

EDIT – I saw her speeding in the store later, again without looking ahead. She almost ran into other people with the stroller.

[Author]

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