Knee pain from running: Should you be concerned?

in running •  2 years ago 

I have been doing running relatively seriously for many years now. I say "serious" only because it is a lot more running than I did 8 year ago or so, which was none. There are real "serious runners" out there that would look at my daily goals as a warm up and I would imagine that I would destroy these people on the weights in the gym. Everyone is different in their fitness goals and that is fine.

Today I want to talk about something that I hear about a lot when talking to my fitness buddies and just like anything related to your body, there is no one answer and if things are serious enough, you should always seek the help of a medical professional and not listen to anyone on the internet's advice - including mine.

These are just some observations that I have made over the past 5 years or so.


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First off, I feel as though a certain amount of pain is to be expected whenever doing almost any exercise. There is a difference between your body telling you "good job" and your body saying "you need to stop that!" Unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there that seem to think that ANY pain after exercise is a sign that said exercise needs to be but out immediately.

These same people also tend to be the people I know that make any ol' excuse to remain fat and lethargic. It's ironic to me that the people who clearly do the least amount of exercise tend to be the loudest ones about putting out advice about it. I always think back to this girl I knew in college that was constantly struggling with her weight but anytime we would go to eat with her she was always doling out advice on dining tips to lose weight that she clearly was not losing herself.

One guy I recently spoke to was admiring the fact that I am now doing runs almost every day and he said "I wish I could do that, but I have bad knees." This guy is about 70 or 80 lbs overweight and he lives in the city like I do which entails walking to almost everything that he does. If moving around hurt his knees, how is it that his knees aren't hurting when he walks 8 blocks to the pub? That is because his excuse is bullshit and he knows it.

I'm not saying someone out there with a self-diagnosed "bad knees" is always lying but it's just kind of funny how this affliction only seems to apply to dedicated exercise and not to everything else in their life like walking to the bar or burrito stand. You don't need to run like Usain Bolt in order for something to be considered exercise, you just need to be doing more than you are if you want to see results.

I have knee pain almost every time after a run. I do what anyone in their 40's would do and I put some menthol cream on them like Ben Gay or Icy Hot. While I seriously doubt that this has any sort of medicinal effect it feels nice, and that is all I am looking for when I do it. After a while the pain subsides and it is just my body telling me that I did some work.

I'm not trying to be anyone's doctor here, but a certain amount of soreness is to be expected after a run or any other type of exercise. This should be common knowledge and maybe it is partially the cynic in me but I feel as though people actually make up chronic injuries as an excuse for why they are doing nothing for their health.

If you have pain in a certain part of your body a long time after the exercise is finished, this might be the time to take a break and focus on diet or perhaps switch to another exercise like swimming that has very little impact. If it still lingers, get a doctor or some sort of physio involved. Just giving up to protect your already at-risk body is one of the worst decisions that you can make and it almost always seems like a lazy excuse to me.

Simply giving up because your knees hurt a little bit after a run is such a lame excuse. Of course your knees are going to hurt after you basically slammed them into the pavement for 30 mins to an hour. Put some cream on them or some ice and sit back and watch TV.

We need to step back from the excuses to not exercise. There are already so many of them in existence do we really need to create fake new ones?


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I went through a lot of pain in my transition to the strongest I have ever been in my life in my 40's. There is a fine line between sore and tissue damage and I think it is important that we understand the difference. There are no shortcuts to health and fitness, you have to put in the work!

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