1. Say Where It Hurts
Because the knee is such a complex joint, it's susceptible to a variety of overuse injuries. The only way for you and your doctor to figure out which one you've got is for you to focus on your leg and locate the pain. Depending on your injury, you can experience pain on the front, back or sides of your knees. What makes diagnosing overuse injuries tricky is that many times more than one injury can cause pain in each of these areas. Before you can get treatment, though, you'll have to do the best job you can of locating your sore spots and explaining them to your physician.
2. Runners and Jumpers Beware
The two most common overuse knee injuries are runner's knee and jumper's knee. Confusingly, athletes can suffer from both, regardless of which sport they play. Jumper's knee, also known as patellar tendinitis, affects the band of connective tissue that holds your kneecap to your shinbone. Too much leaping, bounding or squatting can overload this tendon over time, causing it to become sore and inflamed. The resulting pain pops up when you're active and persists afterward as a dull ache.
Instead of attacking the tendon, runner's knee affects the cartilage between your kneecap and thighbone. Because of this, you'll experience pain directly behind your kneecap, which isn't as sharp as what you'll get with jumper's knee, but it's just as stubborn. If you feel a dull ache on the front of your knee when you walk up or down stairs, you've likely got runner's knee.
3. Burning to Beat the Band
Iliotibial band syndrome is a runner's injury that's easy to spot but difficult to treat. The band itself is a long strip of tissue running down the outside of your leg from your hip to your knee. Unless it's stretched, the band can shorten over time, causing it to rub against the outside of your knee. As you can expect, this produces a sharp pain that pops up unexpectedly during your runs. Depending on your condition, you can experience this sensation as soon as a couple hundred yards into your jog, although it's more common to feel it after a few miles. As with runner's knee and jumper's knee, the best treatments for ITBS are conservative--ice, stretching, NSAIDs and rest should do the trick.
