I Tweaked My Knee

Yesterday, I had an experience that was a little scary but at the same time enlightening.

I tweaked my knee.

I was at the clinic demonstrating a new exercise to a patient (who also underwent ACL reconstruction) and I pivoted a little too much. It was a perfectly safe exercise for this stage of the game. It involved holding a medicine ball in both hands while in the squat position. You go from that position to a pivot to one side while you lift the ball into the air on that side. Then back to the squat position and repeat on the other side. It didn't really hurt but it sure felt weird. Almost like an electric shock went through my leg. After that, it was a little sore and swelled up a bit more than usual.

Today, it seemed normal although a little stiff. I did my workout after work today though and it felt fine (in fact better) than it had previously. I explained my experience with Ernie, one of the PTs. We got into this conversation about function and proprioception. Now I knew that you lose a lot of balance as well as strength with an injury such as one to the ACL. Still, I was very surprised about the signals my body was sending when I did something that it wasn't used to. Apparently, training after knee injuries like mine used to involve mainly weight training on machines such as the leg press. What often happened after the athletes went back to competing is that they ended up getting injured again due to the fact that the weight training wasn't carrying over functionally to what they needed to do. I'm lucky in the fact that triathlon is mainly a straight line sport. It doesn't generally require a lot of cutting like in sports such as soccer and football. Still, if I think about most courses, the run courses are sometimes over trails or through sand. The approach from the beach to the transition area is usually soft and uneven and in some cases extend up a mile (as is the case in Grand Haven).

So the plan is to now incorporate more proprioceptive work including single leg squats, single leg balance and really anything that challenges my balance on my left leg.