beginner adult and knees

[MARIATREK]

Hello,

I started skating 2 months ago and last week i had my first lesson .It was ok and almost every day i was practicing .After too many front swizzles and especially half swizzles (we call them lemons in greece) and squatting i noticed a pain deep inside my left knee. I don't think that it is due to squatting because i am used to this position, i squat everywhere...But this swizzle movement seems to me rather  bad for my knees...  The pain  was not intense but i am concerned about my knees with this sport. As the coach explained me, all the strides are on the edges of the blades...Isn't this posture unnatural for the knees? I generally have quite strong legs and no problem with cycling .I also walk 20 klm without any problem, maybe ice skating isn't good for me...But if this problem is common are there tips for preventing knee injuries, like strengthening of hamstrings or quadriceps?

Thank you very much!!!

[lutefisk]

I'm tempted to think that what you are experiencing is caused by repeating one element over and over.  When you say the pain is "deep inside" your knee are you indicating that the pain in on the inside of the knee vs the outside edge of the knee or deep as in underneath the patella of the knee?  Also, you have not told us how often you skate (number of times per week) or how long per session (30 minutes?  2 hours?).  My advice would be to take a few days off from the ice, allow you knee pain to go away and then return to the ice but instead of concentrating on only one element that instead, you mix things up a bit and limit practicing swizzles and half swizzles to perhaps 1/4 of your ice time.  Practice forward or backwards stroking or work on other skills during the remainder of your ice time.  Also important is to warm up your legs before skating by brisk walking or skipping rope etc.  After skating be sure to stretch.  There are a number of stretching routines which you can do after coming off the ice.  Here is one, but there are many others:  http://www.skating-wos.on.ca/sportsci/stretch.htm  Best of luck with your continued skating!

[MARIATREK]

Thank you very much for your response! the pain is at the middle of  the patellar ligament. I am afraid of signs of meniscus...It is not swollen, i can bent squat and when i don't do swizzles is ok. It is my mistake because i went at the ice rink by car without warming up before. I always go by bike. A 15 klm cycling is a very good warm up. I skate 4-5 days per week for about 3 hours. I have an appointment with the hospital on Thursday .If it is meniscus i will say bye-bye to skating !

[rd350]

The stresses on the knees in skating are very different than cycling and you likely need to get used to this and build up.  Skating almost every day at first may not be a good idea.  I would try to ease in more so you can build up the muscles that are worked very differently in this sport.  Maybe take 2 days off between skating for a couple of weeks and then (if okay) can try every other day?

[riley876]

I had continuous issues with patellar and quadricep tendinitis in the first year of my skating.   Turned out it was a posture issue.

It's about the muscles I was using to maintain a knee bend (and push from that bent position).  I was using almost exclusively the muscles on the front of the thigh (a.k.a. the quadriceps),  which all connect to the patella.   When they pull they pull on the patellar and quadricep tendons in order to stop the knee folding more than wanted.   Which is very hard on the tendons, largely because the leverage isn't optimal.

I eventually worked out I needed to spread most of the load to the muscles on the back of the thigh (a.k.a the hamstrings).   It's a bit hard to see how this can work (I need to draw some animated pics).  They stop the knee folding more than wanted by pulling around the back of the butt (i.e. using the glutes too).

i.e. When both pathways of support are activated, the load on each is half of what it was alone.   Also the hamstring path works better the more knee bend you have.  Whereas the quadricep path works worse.   If people tell you to bend you knees more, and you feel you aren't strong enough to do that,  it's probably because you aren't using your hamstrings enough.   

Off ice experiment - with knees somewhat bent, standing straight up,  bend at hips slowly so body gets to 90degrees, you will feel the hamstrings pulling the knees back without any significant use of the patellar or quadricep tendons. 

Once I had that sorted, the tendinitis went away almost immediately.  Since then I've gotten issues with patellar tracking/VMO/ITB issues, but that more related to poor technique in twisting movements (horrible scraping 3 turns on inlines mostly).   But the patellar tendinitis is all sorted now, even though I am hopping on one foot now regularly.

Knees will probably always be potential issue for me, perhaps always a limiting factor, but so far I all my major problems have been resolvable with technique refinement.

[Doubletoe]

Skating uses the quadriceps muscles (especially the outer quads) more than the hamstrings.  This can create an imbalance between the outer quads and hamstrings that leads to an uneven pull on the knee.  I used to have knee pain in my left knee as a result of this, but my physical therapist helped me fix it with hamstring exercises and quadriceps stretches.  I am no longer doing the hamstring exercises--because I'm just lazy--but I religiously stretch my quads after skating every time I skate.  Using a roller on the outer quads and I.T. bands helps, too.  I also make sure I don't repeat the same thing over and over and over, like sit spins or axels/waltz jumps, both of which rely heavily on that left outer quad.  No knee issues now for several years.
I just read the post above this one and can see how the wrong alignment could make the strain on the knees worse.  To add to that post, the farther back you have your weight, the more knee strain there will be for the same amount of knee bend.  You need to make sure your back is a little arched, with your chest aligned over your knees and your knees over your toes.  You need ANKLE bend as well.  That means you should feel the front of your ankles pressing against the tongue and laces of the boots whenever you have that skate on the ice.
Meanwhile, why don't you cut your skating down to just an hour at a time?  It's not like you have a huge repertoire of moves you're doing on the ice yet, so you are doing more harm than good by repeating the same movements for that many hours per week.

[Query]

I had knee problems for another issue: poor kneecap tracking, due to insufficient and/or unbalanced use of the muscles that pull the kneecap from the sides (I was only using my quads and hamstrings, but one is "supposed to" use other muscles to make the kneecap (patella) track along the path it is supposed to track along. Non-use of those muscles (e.g., obliques, psoas, etc.) kept them short, and helped pull the kneecap off-axis.

It's evident from these posts there are a lot of different problems that can cause problems in your knees, and that a medical evaluation by a suitable expert, who specializes in skating and/or dance, might be helpful. (A general family physician or PT who doesn't know much about skating, or similar activities like dance or gymnastics, might be less helpful.)

The big thing I needed was an evaluation by a really good Sports PT (Physical Therapist) (Dave McCune, Ithaca, NY), one who has dealt with a fair number of skaters and dancers. He gave me a number of exercises to do specific to my issues. But he wasn't cheap - about $100, I think.

There is also a sports PT who regularly posts to this forum, (user name rsk8d), who might be competent to give such an evaluation, as she runs a business that sells PT/related videos and info to figure skaters.

I've also noticed that there are a few figure skating coaches who are also PTs.