Hi, Am sure this problem has been discussed quite a bit. Am 47, been playing for a few years... not a trained player and i only play twice a week with friends (weekends). What is unique about my knee pain is that, it occurs only in summer. It doesn't help much as i live in Dubai and we have 6 months of summer here. Am perfectly alright during the other 6 months, but just as summer begins, the pain is unbearable. I go for Physiotherapy every year and do some exercise for the knee pain (watching videos from youtube). The pain dies down once summer is over. I play on a hard surface (concrete) in a school, will it help if i move to wooden court? Has anyone else suffered this problem being unique to summer? Thanks for your time. Regards, Vijay.
hey vijay how's it going i just had this injury on january this year - left knee, still on going until now (mid may) which i believe and feel is at least 8 if not 9 out of 10 recovered. happened while i was playing my first game of the night back then WITHOUT any warmup prior. in a rally, I run full diagonal length from deep forehand single back line towards backhand net, wrongfully jumped and landed hard on my left. on sidenote, that netshot from opponent didnt go over the net and i won 1 point.. at the cost of tearing my left tendon. the two weeks after are a complete nightmare. frequent forward buckling out of nowhere on top of the constant pain after extensive self research including articles and youtube videos by expert, conclusion is "resistance training" specifically on your quad muscle is the key. i'll try to breakdown my journey and see if you could follow and hopefully heal as fast as i did 1. first two weeks of no sport activities (I still work a non office job that requires standing on my feet all the time) 2. inflamation and pain should be reduced to a 'much more comfortable' at this point. after two weeks of rest im able to do bodyweight squats. about 10 sets of 10 reps with 10 to 20 seconds rest between. do this about 3 times/week so you have a day to recover in between. you can try wall sit if you're still not able to do a squat yet. so the 1st month will be 2 weeks of rest and 2 weeks of light training. 3. 2nd month i upped the volume from 100reps to 120 and eventually 150. on 3rd month i can hit 200 (10 sets of 20 reps - 1minute rest) 4. on 4th month i can finally do a split squad on my left leg without pain like before the injury happened. so i focus on split squad more than regular squat with extra 1 set on left leg per session. note even at this point its still hurt if I try to jog more than 5 minutes and badminton games also flares the pain back straight away. a huge improvement still considering i couldnt even jog at all during the first two months 5. 5th month, now i finally able to jumpback on court with confidence! theres a minor pain everytime i finished playing but it goes away the day after TLDR, you can greatly reduce the risk of this injury by having a solid quad muscle which you only achieve by resistance training and most importantly do a proper warmup before the action! Some people that choose sedentary pathway (just stop physical activities altogether) recover significantly longer with even bigger risk to get the same injury all over again because they lost a lot of muscle mass to support that knee. You see this is why I emphasis resistance training as it's the "irreplacable" key if you want to keep enjoy playing badminton in the longrun.. or any sports activities/daily functionality even Hope it helps and share with us here your journey towards full recovery. Cheers
Check out kneesovertoesguy on youtube, he is the go to person for knee health - https://www.youtube.com/@TheKneesovertoesguy. He preaches strengthening ligaments and tendons with exercises that involve going through the full range of motion. Start small at the regression - walking backwards and work your way up to more advanced exercises. I believe he attributes an imbalance in strength of the muscles vs tendons & ligaments as the leading cause of injury.
