Lately, my knees have both been hurting a little more than I like.
I was diagnosed a few years ago with mild osteoarthritis and bone spurs in the left knee. The right knee was fine back then, but a year or two ago, I twisted it landing on my feet in a pole vault pit — something you’re not supposed to do — and it was sore for a while after that, healed up, and was fine. But lately, there seems to be something going on in there.
Anyway, the last couple of pole vault practices, both knees have been a little painful, especially as I start to get warmed up. I have to really warm up slowly and give the ol’ joints time to get a little lubrication going before I start trying to get after it at all.
I pretty much knew what the problem was right away, and that was the fact that I haven’t been doing things I need to do to take care of my knees — things like running mini-hurdles twice a week, sprint drills, functional strength training. Something I haven’t done in a long time are these little knee strengthening exercises my friend, Troy, turned me onto last year, I think it was.
I’ll tell you about those, but first …
Knees are one of the things that start giving a lot of us trouble as we get older.
Am I right or what?
When I had my osteoarthritis diagnosis, the doctor injected me with something — actually an intern did the injection and I think hit bone on the way in with this long-ass needle, which was pretty interesting — wrote me a prescription for pain pills, and said a knee replacement was in my future.
Uh, no, I don’t think so …
The knee has gotten a lot better since then, but like I said, started acting up a little lately.
Yesterday, I went to the gym and worked just my legs for the first time in probably a few weeks. OK, I also threw in a little triceps workout, but mostly all legs. I did leg press, squats on the Smith machine, leg extensions and hamstring curls.
The leg press, I did really light. Same with the squats. By the time I got to leg extensions and hamstring curls, the knees were both feeling pretty good and I pretty much used as much weight as I usually do.
The morale of the story?
Keep moving.
Sure, there are those serious knee problems that require medical intervention. But regular, old-age aches and pains require, in my humble opinion, a prescription of regular exercise.
I mentioned those targeted knee strengthening exercises my friend showed me last year. I did a few sets of those yesterday, too. There is a whole series of these things that target the knee joint and the small muscles surrounding the knee, and I tell you what, they really work. When I was doing them regularly, my knees were basically good to go.
To check it out, do a search for Kneesovertoesguy on the Internet.
Check it out.
Your knees will thank you!
