status

OK
so now i am cured, almost.
what is happening right now is that I can train and compete without being slowed down by my injury, I still feel quite a bit of pain after a hard game or workout. But I can handle it.

My strategy right now;
make sure not to overtrain. I rarely train on two consecutive days. After each and every workout I ice my knee(s) for 10-20 minutes. This, I think, was the last crucial step in my rehab. It is wonderful!

Make sure to warm up properly. At least 10 minutes of slowly raising the temperature.

I do my yoga practice if not daily, so at least every day after practice; 3 sun salutation A, 3 sun salutation B, and to finish it off; I stand on my knees and let my upper body fall back slowly until my back touches the ground;

One other funny thing that has worked is to with your leg fully extended, quite firmly push the patella downwards; I feel a pretty sharp pain in my tendon, but after a while it goes away, and after maybe a minute or so of pressing the patella down, all pain is gone. Completely gone.

I am happy about my recovery.

flexibility

Have taken up my Ashtanga vinyasa yoga practice again.
it feels really good, and I am sure that the practice is really beneficial to my rehab.

the main points are

general flexibility

hamstring stretch, this has worked out really well, after maybe a total of 20 sessions during the last year i have gone from barely being able to touch my toes, to almost being able to plant my hands on the floor.

core strength, some of the standing asanas are incredibly strenous, also surya namaskara B

hip flexibility, this is still my weakest spot, i am not even near being able to do a half lotus, and remembering my bad knee, i am really trying to progress slowly,

ankle flexibility, I still have a hard time doing a proper deep squat without supporting the back of my feet with something, 1 cm suffices, I really work hard on getting some more flex into my ankles, but they fight back pretty hard.n

my shoulders are also very tense, but i dont think this is as important as having flexibility in the hips and ankles.

I am convinced that the above improvements that yoga brings are essential for a good recovery.

stretching

Kind of symptomatically that I haven´t touched upon the subject of stretching.
I think it is VERY important to stretch the quadriceps, especially after the very heavy squatting.

The standard quadriceps stretch, when you are standing on one leg and stretching the other, wont do.
You have to lie down on a fixed surface e.g kitchen table or the like, lie face down on the table extending your leg to be stretched straight with your kneecap facing down. support your body with your other leg on the florr.

keep your hip in contact with the table and stretch your quads by pulling your foot towards your buttocks.
stretch until you feel discomfort but not pain, stretch for 30-60 seconds.

Why did it happen

I have been thinking lately about the reason I got patellar tendonitis in the first place.
I think it is a combination of factors.

too much jumping in too short a time, I just didn´t give my body the chance to adapt to all the stress that volleyball puts on the knees.

bad technique. probably mostly during the landing phase.

muscle imbalances. Like most athletes i am not particularly strong in the posterior chain.

inflexible, my body is not flexible enough to be able to work during full range of motion.

body weight, i weigh 90 kg, which is not so much for 190 cm, but still gives quite a bit of acceleration to take care of during landing.

explosive power, I have always been more explosive than elastic when it comes to jumping. My standing CMJ is almost the same as a full spike jump. Somehow I think the starting power output gives more of a blow to the knees than an elastic power from the stretch shortening cycle.

Age, I am 45 now, and I am sure that my healing processes work quite a bit slower than they used to...

Science hasn´t found any good reliable indicators as to who actually gets tendonitis and who doesn´t. It seems there are complex mechanisms involved.

eccentric training

So,
now I have finished building my eccentric training apparatus.

It is basically a modified power cage, equipped with two electrical hoists.
I am using it to do heavy eccentric squats on it.

I have done two weeks of training, each week consists of two sessions, each session is 4'4 full squats using as much load as I can handle. In my case it is 130 kg.

It is kind of scary....But it is probably mostly because the whole situation is so new. I ( or my assistant) lower the weight using the hoists, at a fairly slow pace (0.083 m/s or 5m/min). I try to keep the wires slack, by resisting the downward motion. When the bar hits the bottom, i let the hoists carry it back up again. Sounds simple, but as I said, it is pretty demanding mentally to try to work on 130 kg, use as much force as possible, and keep good form.

I have never squatted more than 100 kg before, so 130 kg is "overload" for sure.

The funny thing is that the excercises seem to be working- the pain is almost gone, but it is replaced by a really bad case of DOMS.

lets start

Hi!
I was thinking I might as well start a blog about Jumper´s knee, since the information and knowledge about this condition is scarce, contradictory and generally confusing.

I am 45 years old, I used to play volleyball at a pretty decent level when i was in my late teens and yearly twenties. when i turned 43 I decided that it would be a good idea to take up playing again.

Bang, my jumper´s knee came back.

I have tried a whole bunch of different treatments/strategies.

NSAID Voltaren and the like
ESWT External shockwave treatment
Ashtanga Yoga
exxentric training on a 25 degree decline board
Feldenkrais type introspection of my movement patterns
general weight training using free weights

None of these have worked out perfectly for me
.
Right now I am doing a five day treatment with NSAID, I plan on following up with 4-6 weeks ofrest (trying to stay away from anything that puts stress on my knee)
when I am free of pain, (can you imagine?) i plan on doing mainly eccentric squats for at least 6 weeks.