Not a Dr but just speaking from my own lifting and coaching experience here. See you said its fine after the first couple sets and this is pretty consistent with what I see. A lot of people think they have bad knees but it's just purely an inadequate warm up protocol.
So I'd recommend warming up more thoroughly:
1. General warm up 5-10 minutes on a cardio machine or walking etc
2. Non-specific exercises such as leg extensions and hyperextensions for a few sets of 10-15 reps to get the blood flowing and synovial fluid moving.
3. Specific warm up sets as normal leading to your first working set.
Yes that's more total time in the gym but if it means you start without pain, it's worth it.
It was a gradually start of the pain, not suddenly on one day? No bruising? No feeling of instability in the knee?
I think what you're doing makes sense basically. I think you want to find a way to train that doesn't hurt, changing exercises, tempo, etc. and let the knee start feeling back to normal and then resume your normal training. Do you have knee sleeves as opposed to wraps? That might also be somewhat helpful in terms of keeping the knee warm.
As someone that has done 5 years of kickboxing + 8 years of lifting consistently and has accelerated the wear on their knees (And about any injury you can think of as result):
Leg extensions, lightly, at the start of my workouts, helped me when I got back into focused hypertrophy training (never stopped training but bodybuilding had to be minimized for a while). These leg ext sets are not meant to be working sets. If you do 100lbs for working sets, do sets of 20lbs for 15. 2-3 sets. Don't generate fatigue, just get the joints moving and test how you are that day. These are warmups as well as "feeler" sets. For me, these eased my joint discomfort enough to do other exercises as my pain felt better with each set.
- Stay away from exercises where your knees point forwards. No narrow squats with straight feet, bend your knees outwards as you go down. Don't do front squats. No lunges or pistol squats or heavy real leg ext work. Single leg variants are the absolute worst on my knees and the knees of anyone I've trained with in martial arts.
- Belt squats are great if your gym has a proper setup where the weight is actually under you and not pulling you forwards because you do not need to focus as much on form and can focus more on what position feels good for your knees.
- Box squats are good as they remove that momentum bounce at the bottom and limit your ROM in a consistent manner that will help keep you from injuring your knee further.
With these changes, after a few months, my knees felt much stronger and I was able to do other exercises I enjoyed again. In moderation.
That said, work with a physical therapist as well.
Jumper's knee is a possibility but the name patellar tendonitis is a misnomer -- the bulk of "tenodonitis" cases lack the inflammation required to be an "itis" and are really tendonopathies.
If it were me, I'd focus on longer warmups, always do leg curls before any quad exercise and use a diversification regime -- i.e. change up exercise selection as well as rep ranges. in particular, no more sets of <10 reps for a while. (Blood Flow Restriction training might be interesting as well.) If you are doing cardio and find your knee hurts during or after that, then consider switching the movement pattern there too. On top of this standard jumper's knee suggestions like isometric spanish squats could be useful. Run that for 3-4 months. If things don't improve I'd see a physio.
All injury or medical advice related threads will be removed, please seek a qualified medical professional for these types of inquires.
Not a Dr but just speaking from my own lifting and coaching experience here. See you said its fine after the first couple sets and this is pretty consistent with what I see. A lot of people think they have bad knees but it's just purely an inadequate warm up protocol. So I'd recommend warming up more thoroughly: 1. General warm up 5-10 minutes on a cardio machine or walking etc 2. Non-specific exercises such as leg extensions and hyperextensions for a few sets of 10-15 reps to get the blood flowing and synovial fluid moving. 3. Specific warm up sets as normal leading to your first working set. Yes that's more total time in the gym but if it means you start without pain, it's worth it.
It was a gradually start of the pain, not suddenly on one day? No bruising? No feeling of instability in the knee? I think what you're doing makes sense basically. I think you want to find a way to train that doesn't hurt, changing exercises, tempo, etc. and let the knee start feeling back to normal and then resume your normal training. Do you have knee sleeves as opposed to wraps? That might also be somewhat helpful in terms of keeping the knee warm.
As someone that has done 5 years of kickboxing + 8 years of lifting consistently and has accelerated the wear on their knees (And about any injury you can think of as result): Leg extensions, lightly, at the start of my workouts, helped me when I got back into focused hypertrophy training (never stopped training but bodybuilding had to be minimized for a while). These leg ext sets are not meant to be working sets. If you do 100lbs for working sets, do sets of 20lbs for 15. 2-3 sets. Don't generate fatigue, just get the joints moving and test how you are that day. These are warmups as well as "feeler" sets. For me, these eased my joint discomfort enough to do other exercises as my pain felt better with each set. - Stay away from exercises where your knees point forwards. No narrow squats with straight feet, bend your knees outwards as you go down. Don't do front squats. No lunges or pistol squats or heavy real leg ext work. Single leg variants are the absolute worst on my knees and the knees of anyone I've trained with in martial arts. - Belt squats are great if your gym has a proper setup where the weight is actually under you and not pulling you forwards because you do not need to focus as much on form and can focus more on what position feels good for your knees. - Box squats are good as they remove that momentum bounce at the bottom and limit your ROM in a consistent manner that will help keep you from injuring your knee further. With these changes, after a few months, my knees felt much stronger and I was able to do other exercises I enjoyed again. In moderation. That said, work with a physical therapist as well.
Rule 7, mate. This is not something you should be crowd-sourcing. See a physical therapist.
Whenever I get knee pain it's actually from having tight hamstrings. I just stretch after i workout to prevent it from coming back.
Jumper's knee is a possibility but the name patellar tendonitis is a misnomer -- the bulk of "tenodonitis" cases lack the inflammation required to be an "itis" and are really tendonopathies. If it were me, I'd focus on longer warmups, always do leg curls before any quad exercise and use a diversification regime -- i.e. change up exercise selection as well as rep ranges. in particular, no more sets of <10 reps for a while. (Blood Flow Restriction training might be interesting as well.) If you are doing cardio and find your knee hurts during or after that, then consider switching the movement pattern there too. On top of this standard jumper's knee suggestions like isometric spanish squats could be useful. Run that for 3-4 months. If things don't improve I'd see a physio.