old and broken 47 at 175lb female, suffering from knee pain

[ndoud]

Hi Coach,

Here is another, she thinks she has "quadirceps tendanitus" and has the following symptoms:
Pain at the top of both knees just above the patella

Can’t move from seated to standing or standing to seated, climb steps etc without pain at the top of both knees…

Lately I’ve been hearing some light crunching in both of the knees

I do have some slight pain on the sides and I had this before from running all those years…

My idea is to have her perfect her squat using boxes and perfect technique, but this is my first time running into this, and i def. dont want to make assumptions and hurt her more. Any quick advice you shoot my way would be great.

thanks

[Mark Rippetoe]

She may need to leg press for a while if she can't squat her bodyweight. And if you try to make her squat you may aggravate her knees. The squats will ultimately help the situation, esp. if it was caused by running. But be careful with her at that bodyweight and no previous history of leg strength.

[A Y]

What worked for my sore knees, in addition to squatting, is to stretch the quads, and use a foam roller on all sides of my upper leg religiously. Running may have tightened and weakened her legs in unbalanced ways, and stretching can help with that.

Pete Egoscue's Pain Free book also has some exercises that's helped me, too, and may be worth checking out. He does specifically address knee issues.

Kelly Starrett recommends working on the muscles above and below the painful joint, so you may want to toss in some calf stretches as well. Google for "MobilityWOD" for his blog which is a great resource for all sorts of mobility issues. He addresses knee pain in many of his posts. Good luck!

[ndoud]

thanks

[spiderman]

The squats will ultimately help the situation, esp. if it was caused by running.

Can you expand a bit on that? Is it the limited range of motion of running compared to squatting that causes the problems/imbalance?

I have pain just below the kneecap (patellar tendon?) that was caused by running a few years ago. I'm hoping that squatting unfucks my knee. I've just started squatting and over the past 5 workouts my knee has felt better during squatting than any other time in the day. Not that that is necessarily a good indicator. It probably feels good due to all the blood in the area. Anyway I have my hopes up that squatting will be good for me too.

[Mark Rippetoe]

I have expanded on it at length. The new ROM tends to break up the inflammation, and the strength obtained prevents the muscles and tendons associated with the joint from being "overused", i.e. used at a high percentage of their absolute strength.