Preventing Injury - Knee Health

[Fedorzilla]

One of my big fears (as amplified by reading this forum) is having a knee injury in training. Obviously, there are certain injuries that happen despite proper preparation and ... at the end of the day "shit happens." But, many of us hate being injured and would like to do what we can to prevent injuries, and that knee and back injuries seem to be the most serious and are quite common.

So, I thought I'd post this thing I saw today. Many of these are very common sense oriented, but hopefully they're helpful to people.

TMUSCLE.com | 18 Tips for Bulletproof Knees


Here is some other stuff I found looking today


Knee Popping: The Vastus Medialis

Strong muscles stabilize joints. With the knee, having strong and flexible quadriceps and hamstring muscles can prevent minor stresses to the knee from causing significant injury.

Preventing Knee Injuries: Strenghtening the Muscles Around the Knee Will Decrease Injury Risk

Piriformis Stretch

Advanced Piriformis Stretch - How to Stretch the Piriformis Muscle and Open the Hips




I personally find that warming up well, yoga, and general stretching before and after class are a huge way to take stress of your joints, but if anyone else has some advice (or possibly exercises to strengthen knees and/or ligaments, etc.) please post them.

 

[ShanghaiBJJ]

What kind of Yoga do you do now?

 

[TrumpetDan]

1. Knee pads.

I have been through 2 surgeries before I discovered how much knee pads help absorb the repeated impact on the mat.

2. Dont train cold

Warm up before you train. Especially before sparring. If it cant be helped just let your opponent take side control and let him work for a few rounds. Dont play anything with hooks (butterfly guard...butterfly halfguard) until you are warm.

3. Listen to your body

When your knees are hurting, take time off until they feel good to go. Your body is trying to tell you something. Listen to it. Dont try and train through a knee pain. Before both of my injuries I had some knee issues that lead up to a big injury that made it more likely that I would hurt it enough to require surgery.

I hope my tips help.

 

[Fedorzilla]

What kind of Yoga do you do now?

unfortunately these classes just stopped and I'm going to have to go out to the school separately. I believe it was ashtanga, but Rob largely catered it to BJJ practitioners. It was awesome.

YOGA

 

[ShanghaiBJJ]

Yeah, I was gonna recommend Ashtanga as it also has a conditioning aspect to it.

Is Rob not teaching anymore, or was it just a decision from the club to cancel the Yoga?

 

[ShanghaiBJJ]

BTW, please tell Stan, Ben said hi!

 

[SMillard]

As I responded in another thread, squat.

body squats, weighted squats, pistol squats. Go full range. Since you mention yoga hindu squats.

As far as yoga, You can get some basic poses and do them yourself. There is a yoga show on fit tv, the fact a couple of the women are easy on the eyes makes it even more enjoyable (same with the belly dancing show but that is purely a spectator sport). Then there is always the internet if all else fails. Try a local community group or community college they have yoga classes often. The best thing for a warm up of the whole body including the knees are sun salutations,

start in a standing position raise both hands over your head clasping both hands pointing your index fingers in the air try to keep the arms behind your ears,
release the grip extend your arms out to your side and bend over at the waist keeping your shoulders back trying to touch your toes. If you can't touch your toes bend your knees until you can,
from there brace yourself with your hands and kick your legs back to a pushup position,
drop to a pushup about two or so inches off the ground, from there push your torso up bending at your waist up (basically you're pushing your upper body up and keeping your lower body at the same level) this is called cobra position,
from this cobra position lower your pelvis to the ground taking your legs with it looking up to what is upward dog,
now from upward dog do downward dog (I assume you know that one since you've done yoga before),
From downward dog level out back to the pushup position,
jump your feet up to your hands and slowly stand back up trying to curl up one vertebrea at a time from there extend the arms and you are back to start.

Hold each position for three or four breaths, do this 10 times or so and you should have a nice little warm up and even a little sweat going on.

 

[sfgrappler]

Keep your knees of thy mat in side mount.

 

[Respeezy]

Good topic, since my knees started to hurt a little i've been afraid to injure them further.
Everyone seems to have either knee problems or have had knee surgery before, a lot of guys even multiple times.

Maybe i'll start a topic about massages later , because i had quite some problems with my knee but after a sport massage it suddenly felt good again , worth mentioning that the trouble came back a week later , but it still makes me wonder about the effect of massages on your knees.

Ill definatly try the excercises!
Osu!

 

[nkkny1]

Thanks for the link and the video. I've recently started having popping knees :icon_conf I noticed when we were warming up with squats in class.