A few years ago, while still living in London, I damaged my left knee. Something minor but unpleasant to my medial ligament, and it’s never been the same since. Full range of motion in a normal plane, but lateral movement was problematic. The physio recommended cycling, and cycle I did. After a few months, my knee troubles went away.
A little over a year ago, I hopped off the bike for a while. I was still conscious that my knees could give me problems again, so I took it easy, only doing a small amount of running, and gently increasing distances. That all seemed to go well, and I didn’t have any problems for 12 months.
But then I’ve been doing some more challenging work at the gym recently, doing more stability and control work. Interesting things like taking four foam blocks, stacking a couple of Duradiscs on top of them, then adding a long skateboard, and trying to balance on top. While tossing a small weight from hand to hand. Interesting times. Some of the other work has been ballistic-type movements – explosive movements, with quick shifts of weight. Somewhere along the way that’s aggravated by left knee again, and it’s causing me problems. Fine if I’m moving around normally, but if I ever need to move my left foot inwards, and I drag the foot a bit, it opens up the joint, and causes a fair bit of pain.
Obviously I’m not doing enough on the bike recently. Might have to do a little tour in NZ – but the problem is that it’s all a bit wet and cold here. Maybe it will improve by August.