Having a dodgy knee doesn't have to mean hanging up the running shoes...

Runners tend to be about as "all or nothing" as they come in terms of patients I see in clinic. And as someone who's just completed my first couple half-marathons, I get it! But knee injuries and running often can be managed together with some simple steps.

Other than getting crash tackled at the knee in my teens and twenties, I've never had much trouble with my knees. However the covid years got me into running, and after my most recent half marathon (where I took 15 minutes off my time with those beginner gains, thankyou very much) my medial meniscus has become very irritable. It started clicking when I ran, became painful, swollen, and just turned into a knee that didn't like sudden changes of direction at walking pace, let alone the 42km I had planned for later this year.

But having rehabbed several knee injuries including medial meniscus, lateral mensicus, ACL's and the dreaded patellofemoral joint pain in my work with Evolve Sports Medicine, I'm fortunate enough to know everything I should be doing to offload the knee until it is 'quiet' and then reload it sensibly over time. Funnily enough that sentence can be applied to a heck of a lot of injuries.

I'm currently using my right (good/well-behaved/angelic) knee forcefully as possible with hill hopping, pogos, single leg squats etc. In the meantime, with my left (troubled/misunderstood) knee I started with calf raises, lots of kicking about in a pool, high step counts (walking) and some other light work and have slowly built to some assisted hops/pogos and resistance exercises.

I've never actually recommended this in clinic to patients, because changing someone's running technique is usually a) impossible, and b) ill-advised, but I've also been able to tolerate a little bit of running with more of a forefoot landing strategy, on grass, barefoot. I like this for me because my biggest limiting factor in distance running always seems to be my feet, so this ticks goals off in that regard even if long-term I do NOT want to change running style entirely while doubling the distance I'm shooting for.

It's a wild world of information out there, but the point of the story is that running knee injuries don't always have to mean stopping running - the all or nothing mentality of waiting 10 weeks without running before testing a few gentle 10kms won't get you anywhere, you just need a dedicated plan to build the qualities you need for running while keeping the knee happy. Reach out if I can help you with that, and happy running!

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