A Knee of an Old Unlucky Running Back
When I was 16 after my first knee surgery, my orthopedic surgeon said “Anna, you have the knees of an old unlucky running back”.
Needless to say the trauma, both physical and emotional around my left knee has been here for a long time.
Discovered on my last surgery 6y ago, my ACL had been re-torn, most likely due to graft failure from a not so great graft placement in the original surgery. (A common outcome for those of use with repairs in the 90’s and earlier.)
In the last few years I’ve wavered between the question of repairing it again or just managing pain and flare ups.
This year thanks to always being curious and learning through my body, I have finally unlocked the puzzle of why “rehab” wasn’t working.
It was a combination of things. First and so important, realizing I could change the pain and function. The first and most powerful hint came from doing Ben Patrick’s Knee Ability Program. Some simple strengthening exercises in a modified range of motion showed me that with a little strength I could decrease pain and swelling.
Then identifying multiple impairments while continuing to learn, understand, and explore whole body movements and development. This lens and exploration has finally given me an answer and to change my knee pain, immobility, and dysfunction.
While in a RockTape FMT Movement Specialist course in February, I discovered a blurry sensory map of my hip, likely left over consequence from my 2009 lumbar disc extrusion (which resulted in motor loss of dorsiflexion).
Next, while working with Missy Bunch of MovementIQ, to take a neurology approach to my back pain, she noticed a common pattern of limited ability to laterally flex my pelvis to the right. In most positions, I liked to compensate with my right shoulder dropping down towards my hip instead of my pelvis lifting towards it.
Shortly after while observing my 5 month old niece crawling, I was re-appreciating the role of lateral flexion of the pelvis in driving locomotion. This pattern is a movement I emphasize greatly in the REVitalize Mentorship program.
Naturally, I wanted to filming a crawling video, to share this observation and exploration on social media and filming my own body revealed the same movement faults Missy Bunch found on my standing pelvic clocks, I liked to cheat it by dropping my right shoulder down.
While correcting this pattern for the video, I noticed it required me to really connect into my left side stability both at the shoulder and hip. Feeling and trusting my body to feel the connection between left hip abduction and stability and right pelvic side bending was key.
Remembering the connection between the piriformis and side bending, I knew just how to isolate it and strengthen the much needed pattern. This is an exercise called pelvic leveling.
Ahhhhhh ahhh, finding my weakness. As a seasoned mover I am very good at compensating and hiding weaknesses. Once I exploited this hip weakness I was able to focus on it in many positions and help to strengthen it.
I added them into my strength training program that encouraged squat patterning and leg strengthening in modifications that met my body where it was. (Allison Tenney’s The Den Programming)
3x-4 per week working that plan isolating my weakness, progressing my load, progressing my compression into knee flexion.
Every session I surprised myself that I could move in this pattern of pushing without pain!
Within two months, I have completing changed that narrative about my knee.
However it wasn’t just the 2 months, it was the 24 years of navigating knee pain, learning about the body, being curious, and asking others for help, and helping myself through video.
I am really fucking proud of myself, and my knee. I truly believe a lot of things that we may have once been told ‘surgery will only fix’, or ‘will be like that forever’ are not true. Our body is capable of some much change, relatively quickly, though it takes curiosity, humbleness, and trust to find the right path.
The “rehab” plan I am working: