Mild persistent pain at the back of my knee

Other Discussions Training Discussion
1

Hi all, forgive me if this is posted in the wrong forum, I’ve never posted here before so hopefully, these type of questions are permitted.

I usually don’t ask people online for medical advice, but seeing how my PT will be unavailable until July, I have to make an exception.

So as the title says, I’m facing a persistent but mild pain at the back of my knee that started a few months ago in February after I decided to go on a 10km walk each day.

Seeing as how I was not physically active as I used to be, I wanted to at least do something until I could afford to go back to the gym, and to go back to doing cardio like jogging or cycling. That is why I decided to take on a 10k walk each day to at least do something instead of sitting in front of my PC all day long.

Shortly after a few weeks of me doing that, each time I was out on a walk, I began to feel a slight pain at the back of my knee in my right leg which only worsened the more I pushed through it.

After noticing that, I decided to rest and let it pass using the RICE method. At this time the COVID quarantine started, so I wasn’t able to go on walks as I used to and decided to use that time to rest my knee even more.

Fast forward to May and the end of quarantine, I started to go on my 10k walk routine again, only this time the pain came back quickly on the first day, starting again from mild to strong the more I go.

I knew there was something wrong when nothing changed over these 2 months, so I decided to google the problem to see if it was anything serious, and I couldn’t find anything. The only thing that I did find is that it could be hamstring tendonitis, which seems to fit the description of my problem well. I have tight hamstrings, and overuse of them could have been the result of this, the only thing that I do not understand is, why did it only appear on one of my legs and not the other?

And that’s why I’m here asking you guys, if you could give me any advice on what this problem might be and if there is any way to fix it.

Thanks in forward, and apologies for the long post.

2

I am sorry to hear about the trouble you’ve been having.

If you want advice from the Barbell Medicine pain and rehab team you should post your question in the moderated pain & rehab Q/A forum.

I think you should start by reading this: https://www.barbellmedicine.com/blog…ining-what-do/

I’m not completely sure what you were doing before you decided to go on a 10km walk everyday, but I’m guessing that you were not adapted to that much walking. In general, it is a good idea to build up your level of physical activity slowly in order to reduce risk of injury (and various other reasons too).

I expect you will respond well to staring with some shorter (perhaps slower) walks and slowly building back up.

I don’t think it is important to come up with tissue damage that may be influencing your pain, because I doubt that will change your treatment plan. I’ve found that looking up pain symptoms online tends to do more harm than good. I’m not remotely surprised your pain is unilateral, your body isn’t perfectly symmetrical, you probably use each leg a little differently and you probably have a slightly different relationship with each leg.

You can definitely figure this out and rebuild your tolerance to walking.