The Five Steps For Getting Rid Of Knee Pain
Hi, everyone. Today, I'm gonna be showing you exactly how to get rid of knee pain. But why should you listen to me? Well, I have a fifty point five inch vertical, but most importantly, I went from crippling knee pain that prevented me from even walking up and down stairs without pain, all the way to being able to jump this high with zero pain in my knees. So I'm gonna take you guys through the five steps that you need to take in order to be able to do this.
Isaiah:If you do this correctly, you can literally go from a nine out of ten, eight out of 10 pain during activities a day living to being able to sprint max effort, jump max effort, play sports all without knee pain. Alright. So listen up because this is literally gonna be one of the most important videos you ever watch if you have knee pain. The first step is first asking yourself, do you have tendinopathy? All these things are basically almost completely guaranteed to work if you have tendinopathy.
Isaiah:There are other types of knee pains. There's things like PFP, meniscus injuries, ligament issues, that type of thing. This stuff is not gonna work for that. This is gonna work specifically for tendinopathy. But how do you know if you have tendinopathy?
Isaiah:There are a few different ways you can tell. One, does it hurt when you move faster? So if you were to do a slow squat and then if you were to jump right after that, would the jump hurt more? If you're doing squats, does it hurt more as you do more weight? Does it hurt more as you go into deeper ranges of motion?
Isaiah:Can you pinpoint exactly where the pain is? The most traditional spot for patellar tendinopathy is right below the kneecap and then right at the insertion the other insertion of the tendon right here. Does it hurt anywhere in those two spots and can you point exactly to where it hurts? If that is you, then you probably have tendinopathy and the things in this video are going to work really, really well. Alright?
Isaiah:As long as you listen. Step two, you need to stop doing what hurts. Okay. One of the earliest pieces of advice that I had received for jumping higher is don't go more than a week without jumping or else your vert is gonna leave and never come back. Right?
Isaiah:And starting around the age of 14, 15, I started doing this but then that's also when I started getting knee pain. And I had the knee pain literally from the age of 14 all the way up until I was like around 20 or 21. So, I had it for six, seven years and it was really bad knee pain. At its worst, was about a seven or eight just walking around, I couldn't bend down to pick things up. Like I said earlier, I couldn't walk up and down stairs.
Isaiah:And then, I met my coach, John Evans and he told me, stop jumping. If I'm gonna coach you but you have to follow the number one rule of stop jumping, stop playing basketball. And I'm someone who, you know, this is my passion. This is the thing that I love doing the absolute most Years of your life, you're gonna gain back by stopping for just a few weeks. Okay?
Isaiah:That's rule number one. If you can't do that or it's not you can't, you're always in control of what you're gonna do with your body. You can tell your coach, hey, I'm done for the season. If you're not willing to do that, don't even bother watching the rest of the video because all this stuff is not gonna work unless you do this. And people sign up for my coaching all the time with knee pain, which by the way is the thing that's also gonna make you jump the highest.
Isaiah:Jump training and periodization and plyometrics, all that stuff goes out the window. You have to address knee pain first. It's gonna help you jump the highest. Okay? All that stuff is not gonna matter and people sign up for for my coaching all the time and they're stubborn.
Isaiah:They don't wanna stop practicing their sport, playing their sport, they won't stop having dunk sessions and it's just a waste of time. Okay? So this is the most important thing. Next, step three is you have to start tracking. This alone, like, you you could have no idea how to do any of this, but if you track properly and you know what to do with that information, you will get better.
Isaiah:Alright? This is basically gonna collect data and it's gonna give you information about what to do next. Okay? I take a very analytical approach with this stuff. With training in general, very analytical person.
Isaiah:You guys might have not known, I I was going to school for mechanical engineering for a bit and I was really freaking good at it. This is how my brain works. I love numbers, I love being analytical and objective with things. Okay? And this allows you to bring accuracy into the into the process and it takes us up subjectivity way out of the equation.
Isaiah:Okay? So, how you track properly is I want you to choose a test that is provocative for your knee. Alright? By the way, all these things are applicable for any kind of tendinopathy anywhere in the body, Achilles tendinopathy, tendinopathy at the elbow. But today, we're specifically talking about knee pain.
Isaiah:I want you to choose something that is provocative. That can be a body weight squat. Okay? That can be an isometric hold and you push out against your knee. It can be a single leg half squat, a decline squat, something that's provocative for the knee and then you're gonna rate it from one out of 10.
Isaiah:I have an app on my phone, it's a notes app. I literally track down one out of 10 where I was at. Do the test at the exact same time every single day, the best time is morning as soon as you wake up and that is gonna give you the information about what your knee is doing. The more information you have over the course of of weeks and months and years, the better you're going to be at making decisions in terms of your body and your knee and training. Okay?
Isaiah:And then the other thing that I want you to track is what the most provocative thing that you did that day for your knee was. So for me, let's say I go do a workout, I'm gonna say I'm gonna put everything that I that was knee extension. So I might say squatted 300 pounds and then did power cleans, worked up to a daily max. If I have a jump session, I'm gonna say jump session one hour, hard jumps for fifteen minutes. Okay?
Isaiah:So those are the two things that you're gonna track. Most intense knee extension movements throughout the day, and then what you what you felt first thing in the morning during your your provocative test. And then a third one that can be really helpful is what your pain level was one out of 10 during the most provocative knee extension movement that you did. So again, for the power clean and squat example, I might say, on the squat felt three out of 10 on the last set then it warmed up to one out of 10. On the power clean, just felt two out of 10 in the warm up sets, no pain on the rest of the sets.
Isaiah:And that is all the information that you need to be tracking. K. That's gonna be really useful, and I'm gonna explain why later down the line. Alright. Step four.
Isaiah:If your pain during that morning pain test was higher than a three out of 10, you need to start doing isometrics. Isometrics stands for same length. ISO is same, metrics is length or measure. Okay? And an isometric exercise is an exercise where your muscle is under tension, but it's not changing length.
Isaiah:Alright? So good example of that is holding a bicep curl, holding a weight at your hand and just holding it here. For knee pain, the most effective isometric is going to be a straight leg knee extension isometric. So that's literally you can get on a leg extension machine or you can put a kettlebell out your foot, and then you're gonna hold your leg out straight just before lockout, not completely locked out. It's gonna be like maybe like twenty thirty degrees of flexion, and you're going to hold that.
Isaiah:Now, the reason isometrics are so effective is because one, your tendon is gonna be out of compression. Compression is basically your tendon bending over the bone. Alright? Compression, super provocative for tendons. The next thing that's really provocative for tendons is total load.
Isaiah:In isometrics, you can control the exact load that you're using because you can control how much weight you're using or if you're doing a manual isometric, which is another option, which I like to control by holding my shin here and then I kick out against the pressure of my hands. And then you can control the effort level, which is another way to control that variable of load. And then finally, it takes velocity out of the equation. That's the third thing that can be really provocative for tendons. So if you wanna do the most provocative thing.
Isaiah:Right? I like to think of things I think Charlie Munger used to have this frame of thinking for investors. He would say, what is everything that what is every decision you wanna make to have everything go wrong? Alright? So for tendons, what is everything what is the exercise that would be the absolute worst?
Isaiah:It would be something where you're in a lot of compression, insane amounts of load, and then insane amounts of velocity. So something like dropping from a box, going to a sissy squats, which puts your knees in compressions while holding a weight and then go up and down really fast. That would be horrible for your knees. Well, it would be the most provocative thing for your knees. K?
Isaiah:Depending on how well adapted your tendons are, technically, it wouldn't be horrible for your knees. There's no such thing as a good or bad exercise exercises, just unprepared athletes. K? So, isometrics are good because we can control all three of these variables with a lot of accuracy. Okay?
Isaiah:Now, the guidelines for the isometrics, again, this is if you're experiencing a four or or out of 10 or higher. Okay? I like to have athletes do an isometric cycle if they're like in even higher pain levels. So like a six and above out of 10, I'll put them on only ISOs. If you're about a three or a four out of 10, I like to start on the second stage, is slow heavy concentric training.
Isaiah:But the guidelines for ISOs, you wanna be at 70% effort. Sometimes if you have really messed up tendon, you will be at less than 70% effort. You're gonna do three to five sets, three times per day, every six hours, and you're gonna hold it for thirty to forty five seconds. You know you're doing the correct isometric if it has an analgesic effect. That means the pain goes down directly after the three to five sets.
Isaiah:It's kinda like taking ibuprofen. Super similar example. Right? If pain goes up, that means you went too heavy or you did the wrong variation of ISOs. So, would mess around with maybe a manual isometric or you can try a wall sit, you can try reverse Nordic variations.
Isaiah:There's endless variations. Anything where there is knee extension and you're holding it is an isometric. So play around with the variations until you find something that is analgesic. Again, analgesic means the pain goes down. Right?
Isaiah:So those are the guidelines. You're gonna do that every single day until the pain gets to around three or four out of 10. Once you're there, you're gonna start doing slow heavy concentric training. What does concentric mean? That is a muscle action where your muscle is undergoing tension while shortening.
Isaiah:In a squat, slow heavy concentric would be the part where you're going up. Alright? So there's a lot of research that shows that that is really good for for the tendon. By the way, all this stuff is based on Ebony Rio and Jill Cook's research. So look them up on Google Scholar and read as much information as you can.
Isaiah:You will learn a lot. So that is the next stage. Guidelines for the slow heavy concentric training. The goal is to get to 50 to 70% of your max at a quarter to a half squat at under a three out of 10 pain and that's how you know you're ready to get to the next stage which is energy storage. You wanna load every other day.
Isaiah:Okay? With slow heavy concentric training and you're gonna use isometrics three to five sets to warm up for your slow heavy concentric workouts. Alright? On the days where you load slow heavy concentrics, you're just gonna do the three to five sets of ISOs before your workout, then the workout and that's it. Then, every other day on the days you're not doing the slow heavy concentric workouts, you're gonna follow these guidelines for the ISOs.
Isaiah:You're gonna continue doing the 10 to 15 sets every throughout the day, you're gonna do that every other day. Alright. And you're gonna stay at this stage until you can hit that number. Once you can hit that number, you're gonna start doing energy storage stage. What is energy storage?
Isaiah:That is basically being able to go undergo a plyometric load and absorb it, but you don't undergo a stretch shortening cycle. A stretch shortening cycle is a heavy eccentric movement followed by a or it's a fast eccentric movement followed by a fast concentric movement. So for a jump, that's dipping down fast and then jumping up fast, that's a stretch shortening cycle. We're just working on the first half of it, the eccentric part of it. Right?
Isaiah:The energy storage part of it. How we do that is we're gonna choose a box height. That's what this h means. You're gonna start really low box height, then you're gonna progress that height slowly. Okay?
Isaiah:In this stage, we like to do slow heavy concentric training. We're gonna keep doing that to maintain tendon health and that this can also be really analgesic. You know you're at a correct loading for the slow heavy concentric training if it's analgesic. Right? And you feel better the next day.
Isaiah:Then we like to go load heavy in the weight room, energy storage day off, repeat that process. Now, throughout this whole process, you should always be tracking. Okay? You know you're at the correct level of loading if the pain returns to baseline levels by the next morning. Alright?
Isaiah:Tendons have a latent response to loading. That means that you are going to see the biggest spikes in pain if something goes provocative twenty four to forty eight hours after you subject the tendon to a load. So I'm gonna give an example of me having a dunk session. Alright. So let's say I wake up and I track my knee pain.
Isaiah:I'm on a one out of 10. That's my baseline level. Okay? Let's say I go jump for two hours and I feel no pain. That's all fine and dandy, but tendons have a latent response to loading.
Isaiah:So I have to pay attention to my pain twenty four hours later. So the next morning when I wake up, let's say I do my body weight squat to test, oh, it's at a four out of 10. That means that I did too much. The pain should be going back to baseline. Now, let's say your baseline is three out of 10 and let's say you are in this phase and you do squats with one thirty five slow.
Isaiah:The next day, you're at a three out of 10 again. That's really good. That means you return back to baseline. A spike of pain directly after the loading is actually not bad either as long as within twenty four hours, you're able to return back to baseline. So I might do that one thirty five, feel a four out of 10, then the next morning I test, boom, I feel a three out of 10 or even a two out of 10.
Isaiah:That means I was at the correct level of loading. If I feel a four out of 10, that means I went too heavy or too fast or too deep. Again, these three things that are provocative for the tendon. Alright? And you wanna follow those guidelines throughout the whole progression.
Isaiah:If you ever have a spike in pain, that means you did too much and you need to take a step backward. Now, you don't need to jump from one level to this level unless it's a huge flare up. That's the only time. A huge flare up is something I would classify as like going from under a three out of 10 to like a five, six out of 10. That's when you know you need to make a pretty big jump and possibly go back to a previous level.
Isaiah:But sometimes, you would just need to decrease the weight if you're here or decrease the range of motion if you're here. If you're here, maybe you need to maybe you're at 24 inches that you might just need to drop the box height to 12 inches. Okay? Now, we're gonna stay at this stage until the box height that you are dropping from and absorbing the load, storing energy, you're gonna stay there until that box height is progressed to where it's slightly higher than what your max vertical is. We need to be able to drop from what your max vertical before we can get to your max vertical.
Isaiah:Then you know you're ready for the energy release phase, we're gonna keep that same setup of load heavy in the weight room, elastic loading, rest, alternate, but now we're gonna start jumping. We're gonna progress up from the lowest intensity level of jumps, which would be like a standing box jump at 10% effort to the highest intensity level of jumping, would be a max effort one foot jump. That's the highest level of intensity. And then, you know, you're ready to graduate from this load management setup when you can jump off one foot with speed. Or if you're a two foot jumper, two foot jumps max approach, max effort.
Isaiah:If you're a basketball player when you can handle playing a game without without getting above baseline level of pain within twenty four hours. And, if you are somebody that's an athlete, the way you bleed the sport back in is you start putting it in in your elastic days during this energy storage phase, but control the type of elastic movements you're doing in your sport. So, if you're a basketball player, I might not have you jump. I might have you play basketball, start with a lower time intervals of playing, maybe ten to fifteen minutes, and then we're gonna slowly increase that over time. As you start progressing through this energy storage, energy release phase, we might bleed in jumping into the basketball until you can handle a full game or a full practice.
Isaiah:And then, that's when you know when you can do that, then you know you're ready to graduate to full on jump training. Okay. Now, number five, the rules. No rapid changes in load. Generally, research shows you shouldn't have more than about a 10% spike in loading week to week.
Isaiah:Tenants hate load. The biggest mistake and the biggest reasons athletes start experiencing knee pain is because there is a sudden spike in either the level effort level they're playing, the effort level of jump, the duration of the jump sessions, the duration of the playing. So, you might be used to playing basketball three times a week for an hour and then all of a sudden, you have a tournament where you play for eight hours back to back days. That is a recipe to cause tendinopathy. Okay?
Isaiah:Or to cause knee pain. So that's number one rule, no rapid changes in load. Number two, always ask yourself the golden question. Before any activity, ask yourself, is what I'm about to do gonna make me feel better or worse tomorrow? If the answer is worse, you need to change what you're about to do.
Isaiah:Okay? So, if you're about to have a jump session, you feel like you're gonna feel worse tomorrow, look ask yourself, alright, what's the level below that of elastic loading that I can do? Okay, off vert jumps. If the answer is still no, that's still gonna mess me up, alright, maybe I can do drops. If the answer is still no at low intensity drops, you need to skip what you're about to do and then work your way up this continuum.
Isaiah:Okay. So you would go from here to here to here to here. And then finally, mindset. You need to have a positive mindset and you need to have a long term mindset. This takes time.
Isaiah:Okay. Generally, you can go from really messed up knees if you have something apathy to back to jumping in six to eight weeks. But, to get to where you're completely pain free and it's not an issue when you don't think about it at all can go from that point where it's like six to eight weeks, it takes even longer to get to that other point where you're not feeling anything. For me, it took six weeks for me to go from eight out of 10 pain in a bodyweight squat to max effort jump sessions, but I was still feeling a little bit of pain. That's the thing, this pain is normal, but it was under control.
Isaiah:As long as you have it under control, it's completely fine. And as long as you're tracking and it's getting back to baseline every session, you just stack that up and over time you're gonna get healthy. For me, after those six weeks, it probably took a year and a half to where I basically didn't think about my knee pain ever again. But yeah, you have to have that long term mindset, you also have to understand there's gonna be setbacks, The progress isn't linear like this, it's more like this. Right?
Isaiah:There's gonna be good days, bad days, but the trend, the overall trend of that progress is gonna go upwards. Okay? So, that's the five steps. Follow exactly what I said and you will get rid of knee pain. In my free course that's in the description, I actually have a program that takes you through this completely for free.
Isaiah:So, go check that out. And then, if you want me to actually guide you through this process and you don't wanna do it yourself because this is really tough and it's really hard to stay disciplined, go to thbstrength.com and sign up for our coaching there, we'll help you out. Aside from that everybody, hope you enjoyed the video. If you found any value in this, I know this is a lot of free information, please just like the video. It helps out the algorithm a lot.
Isaiah:It'll help push this out for people. Don't be selfish. Don't be the only ones to have this awesome information. And if you're listening to this on podcast, five stars. See you guys in the next video.
