How To Adjust Training For Knee Pain For Volleyball (in season)
If you're a volleyball player and you have been having knee pain in season, it's probably because you're jumping too often. And as a result, it's gonna be difficult for you to get out of pain because you're gonna continue down that path of having too much load relative to your capacity. And we're gonna get into that in today's podcast. What's up, guys? My name is John Evans.
John:This is Isaiah Rivera. He has 50.5 inch vertical. I'm his coach, and I've coached him for five or so years. This is Austin Burke. He's actually the first athlete I've ever coached, and he has roughly a 45 inch vertical today.
John:Today?
Austin:Yeah. 44 today. 44 today.
John:44 inch vertical today. Alright. He's going down every week. Anyways, guys, if you're interested in coaching, go to teachmestrength.com and use code THP at checkout for 10% off. What?
John:Do you wanna do it? No.
Isaiah:Do you
John:wanna do it? Here.
Isaiah:Go ahead.
John:Go ahead.
Austin:What is that? We should give them a discount. Are you tired of being tired? As little baby once said, tired of tired of being tired? Do you want to get off your couch?
Austin:Do you want to change the world? Are you weary about our coaching? Well, only today and tomorrow and the next couple days. You get 10% off your first month of coaching with code THP. That is THP.
Austin:THP. So sign up now.
John:Alright. We don't need sponsors. Yeah. Think
Isaiah:that's it. Also, one more thing. Yeah. What makes us qualified to talk about volleyball?
John:Okay. So I wouldn't say that we're necessarily qualified to discuss the technical tactical aspects of volleyball. But when it comes to jumping, we are absolutely qualified to talk about it. And then when it comes to the volumes associated with it and performance and human performance, we're qualified to talk about it.
Isaiah:So no. We've trained a metric ton of volleyball
John:metric players. Ton of
Isaiah:volleyball players. Like, last five years. Yeah.
John:But I wouldn't say, like, I'm not gonna tell you how to do a, like, do a set or a shoot or the prop I mean, hitting is pretty simple. I could tell you the biomechanics of that. That stuff's not difficult. I don't I don't think the sport's that difficult. I've also played it quite a bit, but I've never played it at, like, a collegiate level or something like that.
John:I know enough about it to to talk about some of the aspects of it, you know, approaching, timing, stuff like that. But, no, I'm not a collegiate volleyball player. Part of me wants to train to be a volleyball player at some point just to to do it so that we can be even more qualified. Can you imagine if the three of us just decided for a year to
Isaiah:I'm done.
John:To to just be bees at volleyball? I'm done. That would be fun.
Isaiah:I feel like a lot
John:of people would like that. Anyway, so yeah. The issue that we see pop up all the time is guys will come to us and they'll be like, well, I have this knee pain and I'm in season and I'm supposed to play Wednesday and Friday and I have games on the weekend and I don't know how to get out of knee pain. And the reality of that situation is you are SOL. And if you don't know what that means, look it up.
John:I'm not allowed to swear on Isaiah's YouTube. So basically, you have four days in that exact scenario I just gave you, you have four days of elastic loading that you don't have really any time off. And the reason that that's a problem is because you're not gonna be able to use ISOs or slow strength appropriately to actually get you out of pain. So once you're already in pain in the season, you're you're kind of screwed. There there's not really much for you to do.
John:And I guess in your experience, have you guys ever had, like, played a sport, whether track or basketball or whatever where you're in season and you have knee pain? I know you did it. Right, Isaiah? Yes. So what was your experience with that?
Isaiah:You have to go from the mentality of let me take care of this in the season and get healthy and get to a 100%. You have to accept that that is not gonna happen, and instead, you have to go into the mindset of survival. Your objective is to survive and be able to make it through the season without tearing your tendon off the bone. Okay.
John:That was that's one take. So that's if you wanna play at a high level. Yeah. You basically have to say, f it. Like, I'm gonna I'm gonna jump hard.
John:I'm gonna lift or I'm gonna jump hard. I'm gonna try to maybe stay healthy to some capacity the best I can, but in reality, it's not gonna happen. And what was your experience?
Austin:I I never had any crazy injuries in season. How close do you want it up to my face?
John:It the gains all the way down.
Austin:Okay. Okay. Yeah. I've never had any, injuries in season, just like hip stuff, but that was during track season. So they were just like, take two weeks off because that's how track was.
Austin:You know, if you pull you have a little sore calf, you're like, oh, just just rest. Go get some Chipotle. So I haven't really had to go into survival mode like that or anything personally.
John:Right. I don't think in season that in track season, maybe a little bit in high school, definitely in high school or middle school basketball. And I did the same thing Isaiah did. So I was like, alright. You know, I was 14 at the time, 15, and I'm just wearing a trying to dunk before games.
John:And if my knee hurt, I wasn't able to try hard, but I would just either rub the tendon or put on a patella strap, do things that don't work. Ibuprofen occasionally for it. And when the season would end and I would go into track season, it would get better. That's just generally what would happen because I wouldn't be trying to dunk, you know, whatever three days a week and then have full practices and stuff like that. So the the interesting thing about specifically tenonopathy is like, can't apply force hard when you feel that pain.
John:So if you're in season and you're a basketball player like we were, we would just we work around it. Right? And it wasn't to a point where it was like crippling where we couldn't actually apply force. We just couldn't do it to the same degree that we would if we were trying to access our full vertical or dunk or something else. And so that's kind of what you're dealing with.
John:If you're gonna try to play volleyball in season like that and get all your practices in or basketball in season, get all your practices in, it's too late if you've already got pain. You're probably not gonna be able to you're definitely not gonna be able to improve your performance in season. It's probably not gonna get better until the season's over and you actually take care of it. So if you're one of our athletes and you're in season or you're trying to play more than every seventy two hours, it's gonna be near impossible to get you a 100% healthy. You're gonna have to be really creative.
John:The biggest issue with volleyball schedules is that guys go they always have, like, random ass schedules. It's never it's never like every seventy two hours. It'll be like, yeah, it's a Monday, Tuesday, and Saturday.
Isaiah:Four games.
John:Yeah. And four games. And then there's a tournament this weekend where I'm supposed to play five hours. Like the the volumes that you guys play, it's like, oh, we just do this for fun. It's like people that have no self control with dunk sessions.
John:Yeah. Like, it it just doesn't really make sense to me, and I get it. Like, you guys wanna have tournaments and you wanna have fun and you wanna get better at the sport.
Isaiah:What the fuck? Was that a wasp?
Austin:What is that? Oh my god. Take it. I'm taking it.
John:I don't wanna take it.
Austin:I'm taking it.
Isaiah:Oh, it stopped moving. Oh, never mind. I don't know what that bug is. We saw it yesterday, and it was scaring me. Yeah.
Isaiah:It scared me. It stopped moving. It wasn't a wasp. It's it's a weird bug. I don't taking it yesterday too.
Isaiah:It was just like Yeah.
Austin:I was like
Isaiah:Tell us more about the Tell us more about you.
Austin:It. When faced with adversity, you stand there and let it happen.
John:Oh my god. Just like knee pain. Look.
Isaiah:Was just acceptance. Florida things now. Oh, yeah. I was I'm actually debating working out at a gym because the bugs are
John:getting crazy. Dude. Yeah. It's bad. Like, you were eating that burger, and it was disgusting.
John:What?
Isaiah:Like, there were flies just swarming attack me.
Austin:Yeah. That was, like, yeah oh, give me give me give me take that back. That was, yesterday, there was four flies on my book bag for no reason. Yeah. Okay.
Austin:So, John, question. So if you're a volleyball player who is not in a position that is constantly jumping, does it really matter? Can you still play tournaments with knee pain? And how does things like that?
John:That was a good that was a good question. Yeah. You can, actually. So if you're playing Libero or you're not a hitter or you're just a setter, yeah, you're fine. I've actually had a couple guys like that.
John:Silas was like that. Jared Prinsley was like that. He was a a setter and or, he was a setter. They jump a little bit sometimes, at least that's what they told me, but they're not hard jumps. They're very low effort jumps.
John:And so it's kinda like Isaiah and I were saying, like, you can still jump. You can still do stuff. It's just not at a high intensity level where it's gonna hurt. And so they usually can train end season totally fine. They because they don't have the same load management issues.
John:But like we coach another athlete, named Katie, and she is a volleyball player at the collegiate level. D one, very high level volleyball player, touches like ten one or ten two. She gets I think the average jump height is like 24 to 27 inches for her vertical, but she's doing that, what is it, 200 and sometimes a week?
Austin:Sensor stats.
Isaiah:Yeah.
John:It's like No. It was like a day.
Austin:A session. Yeah.
John:Yeah. Would be like 150 jumps a day. And she's doing that every single day. And we had to tell her we're like when she started having a knee pain, we're like, you gotta adjust your volume down. You cannot jump like this.
John:And she was able to do that, unfortunately was able to get her knee pain under control. But she's trying to improve her vertical in season and it's it's good to have that much jumping, but a lot of the time what I've noticed is that they're not accessing their their full vertical a lot of the time, which makes it what was that?
Isaiah:He was rubbing his tendon.
John:Yeah. Which makes it possible for them to get healthy.
Isaiah:Oh my gosh.
John:Alright. Any other things any other things and to sum it up, if you're in season and you have pain, you've gotta adjust your schedule to jumping every seventy two hours. You can't do it every forty eight hours or every twenty four hours. You gotta move it to once every third day. And you could play.
John:You could play defense or whatever, but at least hitting and jumping, that has to switch to twice a week. If you do any more than that, it's gonna get worse.
Isaiah:Also, facts don't care about your feelings. What does that mean? Some people are gonna be mad about what you just said. Yeah. But the fact is that you need to decrease jump volume.
Isaiah:You need to stop doing what hurts.
John:Tell tell them about your experience when when I first started coaching you.
Isaiah:I was used to jumping multiple times per week. I came from the the thought that if you stop jumping for an extended period of time, which in my case was a week, I I felt like if I didn't go more if I went more than a week without jumping, that I was gonna lose my vertical. I was also very addicted to jumping. And the number one rule is stop doing what hurts. Right?
Isaiah:That's that's the first thing John told me. And he said he would only coach me if I was willing to to follow that or else I wouldn't get better. And, yeah, I had to take six weeks off from jumping, but obviously it was worth it. That I haven't had that knee pain. That specific knee pain at the tibial tuberosity, it hasn't hurt in years.
Isaiah:But it's because I followed it was literally investing. I took six weeks off so that I haven't had to take time off for that specific injury since then. Or you could continue trying to jump, and you're just gonna have knee pain for
John:the rest
Isaiah:of your life while trying to jump. So which one would you rather have? Six weeks off for a lifetime of pain free jumping or lifetime of pain?
Austin:Literally selling the religion right now. Six weeks of sacrifice, lifetime of glory. I was actually gonna
Isaiah:So for me, it's a easy trade off.
Austin:But you can I mean, you can have
Isaiah:it back if you
John:have something? Trust trust is
Isaiah:a big role.
Austin:And Trust is a big role.
Isaiah:I'm also I'm gonna cuss. I'm gonna I'm gonna cuss.
Austin:Why? Yeah. Whatever he wants. This is for
Isaiah:what about
Austin:a child?
Isaiah:Fuck your coaches.
Austin:Oh, yeah. Communicate with your coaches.
Isaiah:Oh, fuck your coaches.
Austin:No. No. No. No. For real.
Austin:For real. For For real. Explain to explain what's going on. See if you can brush up on another position. Like, see if you can get your overall skills.
Austin:It'll only make you a better player. You get a better understanding of the game. Your coaches will understand. Just talk to them. They are people.
Austin:They have families, lives, and hobbies. They will understand. Well, some of them. If they don't understand, the
John:Then. Then.
Austin:Then. Yeah. Isaiah's advice. But communication is always first before you f them. Curse them out.
John:And that is a tough thing. I mean, we always would talk about this with with athletes, and basically have to have that conversation of like, well, in high school, I dealt with this. I would be like, well, I wanna do this workout. They're like, no, you gotta do our workouts. And I'm like, well, I'm gonna get worse.
John:And I ended up doing it their way because I wanted to be on the team still, and I wanted to have those aspects. You know?
Isaiah:I did the same thing.
John:You would just made you just worked
Isaiah:around it. I knew. Or, like, for example, like, long distance running. He was making his long distance run every day. You gotta eat it.
Isaiah:I knew that's bad for my vertical, but I wanted to be on the team. That was my my priority was basketball.
Austin:Guess it depends on your priorities then.
Isaiah:Yeah. You have to decide what your priorities are. Like, in an ideal world, I mean, we can play your sport, get you athletic as possible, and get rid of knee pain all at the same time. But the reality is you have to prioritize which one. If if you're somebody with pain that plays a sport
John:Yeah.
Isaiah:It's you have to choose.
John:And education goes a long way. Like, you know, try to have a conversation and educate them. They might be totally opposed to it. They might be open minded to it. There was an athlete that I was coaching that was a d one track and field athlete that was having this issue.
John:And in about roundabout way, because a lot of coaches have a lot of pride and egotistical, they refuse to listen to other people. And a lot of the time those coaches end up in those positions because they were great athletes and then their head coach hires them in an assistant position and then they move up the the ranks. It's not because they're honestly great coaches. It's because they were good athletes and that happens all the time in track. So as a result, they don't actually have the education, and they have a massive ego, and they've been put in a position that, in a lot of ways, maybe they didn't earn as a coach, but they earned as an athlete.
John:And so that makes it doubly difficult. They went from being a national champion or whatever to now being a coach, not necessarily having to go freaking mop floors and pick up weights for months and months and months and learn and listen and be underneath someone and and have someone tutor them essentially or mentor them for years, like I did and a lot of other really good coaches who don't work in those settings and don't have those jobs because of different reasons. A lot of the time it's because of they have to hire women or they have to meet quotas, and that happens all the time in track. If you ask anyone at the collegiate level, at the d one level, head coach, they will straight up tell you that, you that happened to me. They were like, we can't hire you because you're a male.
John:You're a white male, and we have too many white males on staff. And I was like, that's crazy. But that was the reality of the situation. So again, facts don't care about your feelings. Go ahead.
Austin:No. I was gonna say, and like, we're not saying don't go to your team workouts. We're just saying communicate because like if if you do our workouts there, at least the coach sees sees your you know, literally, like, it's like no one's everyone tells their coach like,
Isaiah:no.
Austin:THP said no. And then next thing you know, no one's getting playing time. Like, communicate with your coaches. See if can do this type these type of workouts or the re rehabilitate blah blah blah The rehab workouts there or whatever the hell.
John:I mean, the goal is to have coaches the goal is to have coaches listen to these podcasts, you know, that we grow enough that we educate the coaching community because, you know, these shouldn't be issues that are happening and they still are. You know what I mean? It's happening in volleyball and it's a culture thing. Like the culture has to shift so that athletes health and long term health and longevity improves, not just, oh, well, I'm a coach and I need my athletes to do blah blah blah. Like at what point are we gonna start putting the athlete first instead of some stupid I wanna swear, but some some stupid infrastructure to, you know, our governing body like the NCAA or money or whatever else.
John:Like, So what you're gonna you're gonna just absolutely destroy athletes because it's to your best interests and you make more money at their expense like that's that's messed up in my opinion, and I hate that and coaches do it. I've I've seen it happen. They don't care. They care about winning. They care about keeping their job and that happens at your expense.
John:And it's a culture thing. The culture has to shift at the collegiate level. I think the culture has to shift, you know, even at the recreational level because you have these these guys that wanna run tournaments and do four day tournaments and make more money and whatever else. And it's like that's not in the best interest of the athletes, but that's the way that the culture of the sport has changed or whatever else. People that are indestructible and can do that.
John:And now they're in a, you know, a governing body or a a position that they make decisions in. And now everyone's having to do that. Like, it's just not a good idea. So, yeah, that said, I feel like we've covered this pretty thoroughly. If you guys are interested in coaching, go to teachmestrength.com and see.
John:Let's give them actual
Isaiah:What? Code like Someone's someone's in season. They're feeling knee pain. What should they do?
John:Maybe this is where the whiteboard comes in. Well, is talk to your coach, and you would have to get on a schedule where you're keeping your elastic days all and your power based stuff all on the same day. So you would have and you would need to split it up by seventy two hours. The following day after your elastic work, you need to do slow strength. The following following day, so seventy two or forty eight hours later, you're doing just ISOs.
John:And then you're back to jumping and you repeat that cycle. So it's day one elastic work, day two strength work, day three is ISOs. You don't wanna jump or sprint or do power work or anything where the tendon is stretching aggressively more frequently than once every seventy two hours. And then a slow strength day, heavy slow resistance training has to follow the elastic day, and then you need to do ISOs every seventy two hours. That is how you are able to do it in season, get better, and get healthy.
Isaiah:And decrease intensity on the elastic work to where you feel like you could bounce back the next day, have have pain, go back to baseline levels by the next day.
John:Another option is the Lebronet. So I tell people, okay, maybe you gotta practice every day, but you don't practice hard more than once a week. What is this?
Isaiah:I think Walmart delivery.
John:Oh, okay. Yeah. Is that good? Yeah. Please stop.
John:Alright. Well, thanks for watching guys. Like I said,
Austin:Go THP for 10% off your first month.
John:Go to thpstrength.com and sign up. Huge shout out to our sponsors over there at THP Strength. Those guys are great. So if you're looking for coaching, they they're definitely gonna be the best the best resource for you.
Austin:Get off Tinder. Get on THP.
John:Thanks for watching guys. Comment, subscribe, give us five stars, and we will see you guys tomorrow. Peace out.
