Runner's Knee - How to fix ASAP?

AC Slater wrote:

This is actually pretty easy to fix. You need to strengthen your quad.

You are SO close. It is an easy fix but you DON'T need to strengthen your quad. You need to find where the muscle is sore and press the "knots" out. You also need to run easy avoiding any downhills for a while.

Remember, when you have an injury, it is usually because a muscle is overworked not because it is weak. If you try to do strengthening exercises for that muscle, you will only make it worse.

Two reasons your knee stopped hurting during the race. First your body produces enough endorphins to take away a lot of pain when you are running hard. Second, the quad muscle will loosen up and not be pulling on the knee. When you finish, the muscle will tighten back up and you will feel the knee pain.

Press or roll your quads out every day, run easy until the pain subsides, and avoid downhills and you should be good to go in a couple weeks.

Foam roll your IT band. Worked wonders for me.

Can you elaborate on the bit about motion controlled shoes? I recently started running again and I've gotten runner's knee in my right knee, which I do think is due to the fact that I've been running exclusively on the left hand side of the road. I alternate between Brooks Ghost (neutral) and Saucony Guide (Support). I'm wondering if one of my shoes could be contributing as well.

Nailed it ` wrote:

RunnersKneed wrote:

Do you run on crowned roads? What I mean are roads that are slanted at a slight angle at the shoulder.

Runner's knee is 100 percent caused by running on crowned roads, and/or motion controlled shoes. There's a chapter about this in Lore of Running, by Noakes. Eliminate the cause, and the problems will go away quickly. Ice your knee in the meantime for healing.

I went through this in HS and college.

Growth, leg length discrepancies etc, not an easy fix.

Here is what I would do after the experience;

Cross train the holy hell out of yourself, only doing light jogging 3dsts a week and sharp 100m strides.

Trust me, by the time your whole XC team is hacking, coughing and feeling miserable, you will be ready for conference, state qualifiers and feeling like a bomb ready to go off.

STOP trying to get back into the mileage trap.

op - go to a good physical therapist. that's your first step. don't take yahoo answers/Quora/webMD-esque advice here.

fatbody wrote:

Can you elaborate on the bit about motion controlled shoes? I recently started running again and I've gotten runner's knee in my right knee, which I do think is due to the fact that I've been running exclusively on the left hand side of the road. I alternate between Brooks Ghost (neutral) and Saucony Guide (Support). I'm wondering if one of my shoes could be contributing as well.

Yes, definitely. Running on the side of a crowned road sounds like the initial cause in your case. Motion control shoes are any shoes that force you to land in a certain rigid way, especially when this is different from the natural motion of your feet.

I had it in my left knee for 14 months. Just ran through it. Recently been having time off and around the 4 week mark my runners knee has gone. Question is what causes it. Never had IT band issues so it's something else.

Runners knee is not a real injury