Knee Pain

by Anne
(Mississippi)

Hi, several of your answers on what to do about knee pain include "taking it easy" for a while. I am having some moderate, but constant knee pain. The last time I ran was 5 days ago, and it is still hurting.

Does taking it easy mean, to go slow and not increase mileage, or not to run at all until the pain goes away. I want to at least do a little running even if I have pain, but I don't want to do anything to worsen the problem.

I know you have a lot of knee pain questions, but I couldn't figure out if I have to stop completely until the pain goes away. Thanks for your time and help.

Answer by Dominique:

Hi Anne,
Thanks for your question about knee pain. With some (knee) injuries you can sort of nurse the injury with ice, care and muscle strengthening exercises whilst still continuing your running program. Or at least you'd still be able to run a bit.
The key there is that you are trying to fix the problem.

So, what I am curious about is what exactly your knee pain is and where it is located (inner side, outer side, below the knee cap, etc.) and what you are doing or can do about it. Only then I would be able to give some better directions for you personally.

Still having pain in your knee five days after running indicates that something is not quite right. I would definitely recommend going to a physio to get this checked out. The physio would also be the best person to tell you what you can and cannot do with the type of injury you have.

Usually when I say "take it easy" I would mean to stop running for a while. Thanks for pointing out that that is probably not clear enough. You can still keep on exercising though. There are plenty of cross-training possibilities out there.

With pain as persistent as yours, I would definitely "take it easy" for the next little while ... :)
So stop running, but also, get to the bottom of this. Find out what exactly it is in your knee that is not working right and what you can do to help it get better. What caused it in the first place? Your mileage, your shoes, the way you run?

Make sure you try to fix this before you develop a chronic knee injury that will haunt you for years to come.