The infamous cracking knee

[Giulio Pizzini]

Since I've taken up Olympic lifting and started to squat below parallel I've noticed that my right knee cracks when I enter or exit the bottom position of a squat.

It's not painful or discomforting and I simply ignored it until my chiro told me the cracks mean my knee is not tracking properly and I am creating friction that is slowly grinding away the joint (or something like that).

Since knowing this the cracking is psychologically very tough to hear and starting to affect my squats since I can't help focusing on the noise and trying all sort of small movement change to see if I can avoid it (very rarely I seem to manage to avoid it but it is kind of fortuitous and not repeatable).

So I am now doing the whole stuff: stretching, trigger points, glute activation, foot drills but the cracking hasn't changed a bit.

The question is: would you stop squatting (and full snatching, cleaning) until you fix it?

I guess 'd rather resign myself to a sad life of power-lifting squats and power snatches/cleans rather than screw up my knee in a few years and end up with an even sadder training regime...

[Steven Low]

Read this:

http://www.eatmoveimprove.com/2010/0...licking-oh-my/


Where exactly is the popping? Front or back, left or right? Trying to get a feel for what you need to do to eliminate if you wanted to.

Generally, no pain = no problem though. But in some cases, its easy to fix like the example given above.

Cartilage rubs all the time when we WALK or MOVE for goodness sake. A little popping is likely not going to do anything unless you have issues with your diet. Excessive inflammation = poor repair of cartilage from wear and tear = faster you wear the stuff out.

[Giulio Pizzini]

Thanks for the link Steve, I went from there to the http://www.eatmoveimprove.com/2009/1...-dysfunctions/ article which was great as well.

I'm not sure whether my knee is cracking or clicking, I guess it's more cracking since it's a "compound sound" not a single noise (if that makes any sense...).

Anyway the noise is on the front, maybe slightly to the right. I've been getting quite a bit of fish oil daily for the last few months so I doubt diet is an issue.

I need to push the knee forward besides my toes to get the cracking, if I squat down and up with the shin vertical it does not happen.

[Steven Low]

Yeah, that tends to be tightness in the vatus lateralis/IT band area.

Really foam roll and stretch those out.

Generally whichever side the clicking/cracking noises are on those are the muscles that are tight....

And keep the shins as vertical as possible when you're doing stuff!