So… You Have Jumper’s Knee

Did you know that jumper’s knee, aka patellar tendinitis or quadriceps tendinitis, is among the most frequent injuries in sports. According to a 2009 Biomed study, if you are a volleyball or basketball player, your chances of having had it are 30 - 51% and 25 - 32%, respectively.

This leads one to wonder… why? And more importantly, how can we prevent it?

THE WHY & WHAT

Though Jumper’s Knee can happen due to repetitive jumping, particularly on hard surfaces, it is a slightly misleading term as it can also occur from other repetitive motions at the knees like stair climbing, kicking, or running. 

These activities place a high load on the patellar tendon, which can increase the risk of developing Jumper’s Knee. A sudden uptick in training volume during training phases such as preseason conditioning, starting a new squat cycle, or incorporating more plyometrics into your training, can easily trigger this overuse injury, and many others. 

Symptoms typically include pain, tenderness and inflammation at the patellar tendon, pain with bending, and pain with activity.

PREVENTION

1. Warm Up: on a day to day basis, do the work early by warming up appropriately! Though your ego may tell you that you don’t need to, you do, especially in colder temperatures. Ever try to stretch a rubber band that came straight from the freezer? Yeah… doesn’t result in shooting it across the room at your friend, results in it snapping. Don’t let that happen to your muscle.

2. Build Your Posterior Chain & Good Movement Patterns: make sure you have good body mechanics as they apply to your sport. Example used in video: defensive slide. Are you dumping into your quads? Or preferrably using your glutes and hamstrings.This is where getting into the weight room is ultra important because you train your body to know what to do without having to think about it when practicing or competing in your sport.

3. Do the Work Early: similar to the previous tip, your training should be well in advance of when your actual competition schedule starts. The off-season is a great time to work on making your muscles strong and pliable - quadriceps, hamstrings, anterior tibialis, soleus, gastrocnemius. Furthermore, improving the mobility of joints up and down stream from the knee - ankle and hip - make it less likely to incur unwanted pressure in the knee joint because the overall system that is your leg knows how to absorb and transfer force appropriately. 

You Have It, Now What

Sorry to hear that! The encouraging news is that youu can absolutely rehab yourself though. Start with mobilizations shown in the video, complete each for 1 - 2 minutes per side:

• Quad smashing

• Quad scrubbing

• Pin and stretch

Then, incorporate the following specific strengthening exercises (also shown in the video) into your strength training routine as a warm up. These are also a good idea for before hitting the court, or whatever surface your sport or activity is played on.

• 2 x 10 Bodyweight Tempo Slant Board Squats @ 4 seconds on the eccentric

• 2 x 6 - 12 Reps: Light weight Tempo Slant Board Squats @ 4 seconds on the eccentric

Heavy Bench Press vs. Turkish Get Ups: Which is better for boosting athletic performance?

This is a PSA mostly to the gentleman in the room. It’s going to be an uncomfortable truth… please don’t look away… but, bros, bench press isn’t everything. 

How much you can bench is not an exceptional measurement of ones fitness. Contrarily, in my professional opinion, it’s actually one of the least valuable movements available to most athletes.

Is it easy to do? Yes. Earlier today I found my 1 rep max with barely having had to warm up. You literally get to lay down to do bench press.

I’m not saying that makes it easy per se, but it is one of the easier movements to perform at any age and fitness level. Think about it, the only limiting factor would be a shoulder injury that prevented horizontal pressing, which for the most part when it comes to shoulder injuries, horizontal pressing is more often than not an acceptable range of motion. 

Why is the Turkish Get Up (TGU) a superior movement to measure fitness and athleticism then? Several reasons, one of which ironically does involve lying down.

TGU > BENCH PRESS: HERE’S WHY

1. TGU’s teach you how to get up and down from the ground. While not necessarily a huge concern for young athletes, this is an extremely valuable life skill. The mobility and coordination to do a TGU assists all other movements (spoiler alert, even the bench press) because it requires effort from every system in your body.

2. TGU’s bulletproof your shoulders and core. If you have tried them before, you already know that the demand on your shoulder to keep that weight safely overhead without your elbow squishing and the weight crashing down and concussing you, is significant. This stability is essential in most other movements in the weight-room and in sports, particularly the ones that require overhead movements like hitting, throwing, setting, serving, swinging, or handstand walking. 

3. TGU’s train your Central Nervous System (CNS) to a greater degree. The more motor pathways involved in a movement, the more neurons that are required to fire. Have you ever read Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers? If not, I highly recommend. It talks about the physiological changes that occur in the human body with repetition and practice, one of which is the myelination of our nerves. Blink note: the more myelinated our nerves, the stronger our proficiency at a skill. The more stress a movement has on our CNS, the faster the nerves become myelinated. 

Don’t get me wrong, I like Bench Press. It’s a great lift and serves a purpose in everyone’s training, especially if you are a competitive Power Lifter. For the vast majority of the population though, we shouldn’t be asking “Bro, how much you bench?” we should be asking the much less sexy question of, “Bro, how much do you TGU?”.