Starting this past Easter, whenever I go on long car trips, my knees will be “achy” when I stop to get gas, food, etc.
The car ride during Easter was about 10 hours one way, so two 10-hour rides in about 4 days; I’ve made a couple similarly long trips since then.
The “achyness” doesn’t occur during the drive, only when I stop and get out of the car. Typically, it’ll start when I actually get out–the joint will be stiff in the flexed position and will feel slow to fully extend. There will then be some mild ache in the knee and some slight weakness–I like to say I feel like I have the knees of an 85 year old man. My gait will also be kinda off for a bit. Sometimes, it’ll clear up before I get back in the car; sometimes it doesn’t. But again, not discomfort while driving.
Typically, it goes away by the next day, and I don’t feel any worse for wear.
Some personal stuff:
Male, 37, ~195 pounds, 6 feet tall, training for about three years. I’ve never had this experience before that I can remember. Early this year, I did some stupid unilateral lower body programming and went really crazy with some volume leg presses that “injured” both knees. I’ve since stopped doing that and the knees are fine now with respect to training.
Finally a question or two:
I tried googling a bit and didn’t really see anything worthwhile. Is this something that is relatively common?
Is there likely something I did to cause this situation? I’m thinking it might be a lingering effect of the knee stuff I had early in the year, but I hadn’t had any knee discomfort for quite a bit before Easter. It’s also possible that it’s not relevant.
I don’t have any fear that I have some terrible injury or anything like that, but it’s certainly annoying. Is there anything that I can actively do before or during the drive that may alleviate the achyness? Yeah, not taking such long car trips might help, but that’s not likely.
@alek.exodus sorry to hear about the knee symptoms. What you are describing is fairly normal; sometimes people will call it theater knees (sitting in a fixated position for long periods of time and having symptoms subsequently). One coping mechanism you can use is figure out what your tolerance is for driving and then schedule breaks for long trips like that. For example, let’s say you figure out a fixed knee position can be tolerated for 2 hours, then just before the 2 hour mark take a break at a pitstop and walk around a few minutes, maybe do some air squats, then get back in the car and continue on. It’s fairly normal for anyone who is fixated in a particular position/movement for periods of time to feel uncomfortable and develop symptoms.
