Knee injury?

[Steve Morrin]

Alright. I have a question for the injury experts out there. The inside of my right knee has been bothering me for a while. It's usually not quite pain, but it sort of twinges. What
are some common injuries in that area?

[Tom]

I think I may know what you are talking about. Back in December/January I had what sounds like the same thing on the inside of my left knee.

In my case it was a little twinge right around where the hamstring or perhaps whatever muscle is right next to the hamstring on the inner side of the leg connects to the inside of the leg by the knee. Not really a pain but a feeling of instability like if I stepped or moved just the right (wrong?) way something bad/painful could happen. 

I'm not sure if it was a touch of low hamsting tendonitis or something else. Someone else on the blog who is expert on all the fancy-pants muscle and injury jargon might be able to shed additional light.

I did the standard stuff (ice, slow down a hair, anti-inflammatories) and luckily in my case I was still able to do most everything running-wise that I could have done otherwise. I still did my hard tempo runs but I maybe ran even slower than usual on my easy/recovery days.

But it seems everyone is different on what there body will let them do while trying to recover from injury. Even when it's the same runner with the same injury as experienced beforehand there is no guarantee that what worked before will work the same way the next time. Little variances in how we train, eat, sleep, degree or stress in life, etc. all play a role.

I think the injury prevention/treatment strategy that Sasha posted the other day is a good starting point for how to approach dealing with almost-injuries or full-blown injuries.

[Josse]

I have had inner knee injury.  Mine was the synovial sheeth that surrouds the knee it was inflamed.  But the knee is a hard one.  It could be your adductors/medial hamstrings are to tight and causing the "twinge".  I would recommend a good massage.

[Steve Morrin]

Hmm...a massage is something that I have heard reccomended before. It's probably a very good idea.

[Nick Miller]

I partially tore my vastus medialus on the inside of my right knee. I tried to run through it, but ended up taking five weeks off. At first it didn't hurt too bad, but progressed fairly fast. It took forever to completely leave. Massage and icing helped me a great deal. I did some strengthening exercises, also, which helped a ton. The sports physicians I saw stressed the point that the knee most often begins hurting due to muscle imbalance somewhere else in the leg (quad, calf etc...). In other words, they said it is an area in which muscle imbalances often manifest themselves. When I truly began to work at knee specific exercises (raises etc...) to correct the imbalance, my knee healed.

[Steve Morrin]

I hope that I didn't tear anything in my knee. My coach has talked to me before about the possibility of muscle imbalance. He just said to get a massage.

[Josse]

Muscle imbalances can be fixed through stretching and strenghthening the weaker muscle.  I do power yoga for that reason. 

[Steve Morrin]

What be another way to fix muscle balances besides yoga?

[Tim]

I have been battling an inner knee problem myself for the past few months.  Mine is actual pain though.  I have taken some time off to cross train and just going to the gym to work on quad excersises to strengthen my quad.

[Steve Morrin]

hmm...what exercises would strengthen your quads.