Day 156 - Insane soccer Saturday

A compilation of amazing moves by some of the modern day greats (The end has a great clip of Maradona freaking out):

Day 154 - Leg song Thursday

What would summer be without a little Steven Tyler. Here's his band Aerosmith doing Falling in Love (Is Hard on the Knees) [great video, by the way]:

Day 153 - Rubbing me the wrong way

The edge of my kneecap has become sore and painful. I'm not sure if this is left over from the surgery or if this is due to the increased activity in recent weeks. But the way I've started treating it is something called transverse friction massage, which basically just means rubbing it with your finger back and forth perpendicular to the direction the ligament fibers run.

As you can see from the photo, the patella ligament runs across the knee cap. That's what's become inflamed and is the source of my soreness. To massage the sore spot, I have to put one hand on the top of my knee cap and push down to tilt up the bottom of the knee cap. Part of the ligament extends just under the lip of the knee cap, so by tilting it up, I can better access the sore bit and massage it with my finger.

I learned this technique from a previous physical therapist. My physical therapist has never mentioned it and may not even know about it. So it's a good idea to shop around and even switch physical therapists if your current one isn't helping. In my experience, they all seem to have different knowledge and preferred techniques, so one of them may know a method that can help your particular condition.

The transverse friction massage seems to be helping so far. It really made a difference when I previously used it during my rehab prior to the surgery, so I'm hoping I get similar results this go around.

Here's a nice overview of how to treat patella tendonitis. It briefly discusses the massage technique, if you're interested in learning more.

Day 152 - May the Force be with you

One improvement I've noticed recently is that my knee seems capable of generating more force, in running and especially jumping. I was doing some practice one-legged hopping yesterday to prepare for the final test in a couple of weeks, and my knee felt a lot more functional than it has since the surgery.

It's difficult to explain, but previously, it was like I wasn't able to generate as much springing action in my surgically repaired knee as with my other knee. I could still hop as far, but I really had to go through all sorts of contortions and effort to get my leg to land in the right place. And even then, something just didn't feel right, like things were out of sync and there just wasn't any power being generated.

But yesterday, for the first time, I felt like I was getting springing force and was able to easily hop the same distance on my surgically repaired knee as on my other leg. And according to a recent study, ACL reconstruction eventually allows the patient to produce as much force as he previously could. The researchers compared people who had undergone ACL surgery to people who had not and found no loss in function in the former group. The researchers concluded: "After ACL reconstruction, rehabilitated participants did not exhibit deficits in force production or reactive strength capabilities. Our results suggest that force production and reactive strength capabilities can be restored to levels comparable with the uninjured control limb..."

It seems only appropriate to end this post thusly: May the Force be with you.

Day 149 - Insane soccer tricks

Some of these are probably faked camera tricks, but it's still fun to watch. I'll consider myself recovered when I can do the flipping-around-with-the-ball-between-my-legs-and-then-shoot trick.

Happy Saturday:

Day 147 - Leg song Thursday

The knee felt pretty good the day after the long bike ride. It felt pretty good when I went for a run earlier today too. This was actually the first time my knee felt fresh right from the start. That's quite an improvement. I've usually just felt like I was plodding and struggling along. But today, I felt like I had jets. There's still a few tweaks of pain, and I really didn't want to push it past 25 minutes, but it definitely feels much better than it did when I first resumed running on the road.

Here's a classic from John Mellencamp: Get a Leg Up (it's really more about an impromptu threesome than legs, but it's close enough for me).

Day 145 - Tour de Knee

I rode my bike about one hour today. I only planned to go for about 40 minutes, but I was inspired by Lance Armstrong's amazing performance today at the Tour de France (For those who don't know, the 37-year-old guy erased a 40 second lead in the team time trial and missed donning the yellow jersey by just thousandths of a second).

So when I hit 40 minutes, I rode on. My knee felt OK at that point, so it seemed like a good idea. On the way back though, my knee was starting to ache a little, mostly around the bursitis area. It feels a little stiff now, but mostly OK. This may have been a bad idea, but we'll find out tomorrow.

Before I left, I rolled the hell out of my vastus lateralis. That seems to help, so I'll do more of that tonight. And hope that the knee feels pretty decent in the morning.