Pain at top of shin

[AndrewS]

Prado,

I took about 2 weeks off from squatting, ice and ibuprofen daily until the inflammation went away and then started back up with a deload and some cho-pat straps ($15ish a piece at the local sporting goods store) to keep the tendon warm and supported. However, the biggest fix to this issue for me was PVC rolling my quads daily and getting some mobility in my hips/legs courtesy of mobilitywod.com

Now I wear the strap(s) only when that area is feeling especially tender and I feel the extra warmth and support may help. Go to Home Depot and buy the PVC pipe. Learn to love it.

[JTC]

Sounds to me like the pes anserine. It is where the sartorial, gracialis, and semitendonosis connects to your tibia. I have pain there and it was also tender to touch. I don't get pain when squatting but hurts next day. My pain started when I tried a very wide squat stance. Try stretching your hip adductors and make sure your feet are stable on the ground (good shoes).

[eddieolong]

Try this. Bend your knee almost completely and take a hard ball of some sort and roll it along the tendon between the tuberosity and patella. It's probably just tight and need some relief. Also, put a pole or something of around 2" diameter in the bend of your knee and sit back on it. This will assist with the stretch. Ice and heat. Let me know if that works after a week.

[Nate-L]

I haven't squatted for the longest time because of pain at my right tibial tuberosity. I noticed that I am quad dominant. The hardest part in dealing with this injury is that it is very easy to bring the pain back. I think the best course of action is to take at least two weeks off from all physical activity. I say all, because even if you just work upper body, and at least for me, it usually tends to lead me to try to do something like body weight squats that will re aggravate the pain. I noticed on body weight squatting, that the more vertical you keep your shins the better. Also, there is no pain when you really feel it all in your glutes. The problem is that not every rep is exactly perfect, and if you're having this pain, you are probably not used to moving in a way to utilize your glutes well. The best way to do squats is learn to use those glutes on every single rep.

[naherron]

*Bump*

Ok, so now I am having this issue. It started when I took 10 days off from training to visit Spain. Has anyone ever fixed this issue? I can't squat or deadlift for shit now because of the pain and I HATE it. The pain is right on the tibial tuberosity. It started on both knees, one is good now and the other got worse when I tried to start squatting again.

[luvwofear]

1

[luvwofear]

I'm experiencing this exact same pain. It happened during my first working set of squats one day on my right leg, and although it hurt it didn't keep me from finishing up that day's training. The next training day the roundish bone (I wasn't aware that not everyone can feel this, weird. It's right below the knee and has swollen slightly larger than the same bump on the left side) was tender, but only if it got pressed on or I "squatted" down to pick something up with knees traveling forward.

The worst thing about this injury (I wouldn't even call it that really, it's just been a minor nuisance really) is how it affects the deadlift. Keeping the bar in contact with the legs like your supposed to can be scary. A couple times now I've bumped the swollen bit with 300+lbs on the descending portion of my deadlift and had my right knee extend suddenly and uncontrollably (ie: reflex test style, like the doc hitting your leg with the hammer.) Not my favorite feeling in the world for sure.

Hi AndrewS, I've read you post on the knee injury you had back in 2010.
I too injured my my right knee (Tibial Tubercle) on a heavy squat. it's been four months and the pain does not go away!
every time i try to go parallel on the squat, the pain is just there.

I was wondering how you took care of your injury. it's super frustrating. i hope you are better now.

[Tyler23]

Hi AndrewS, I've read you post on the knee injury you had back in 2010.
I too injured my my right knee (Tibial Tubercle) on a heavy squat. it's been four months and the pain does not go away!
every time i try to go parallel on the squat, the pain is just there.

I was wondering how you took care of your injury. it's super frustrating. i hope you are better now.

I found something that seemed to work for me so thought I'd pass it along.

I had some pretty severe pain in my right tibial tuberosity a couple years ago. For the first few weeks of PT, he had me doing a number of stretches that didn't really seem to help (got a bit better but didn't go away; hard to tell what improvement was from the exercises vs total rest).

Eventually he had me do a slant board squat. I used a half-round piece of foam and put my heel on that (about 3"), then do an eccentric squat with only the injured leg (about half way down or whatever's tolerable), then up with both legs. I was doing this twice per day, two sets of 10 reps. After doing this for two weeks, the pain cleared up and I could resume squatting. It doesn't feel good while doing it, or after, but it did work.

The reason I am looking into this again is because now I have the pain in my left knee (dammit). So I am resuming this exercise in the hopes it really was the reason for my recovery. Looking back through my logs, it seems the culprit here (for me) could be leg extensions. I started a leg specialization program four weeks ago that included leg ext after leg press; and this is the first time I've done them since the last episode of knee pain. Doesn't hurt while doing them for some reason, but it's really the only exercise I'm doing now that I was doing then, so I'm done with those for good.