I play quite a bit of racquetball. For almost 10 years, I’ve played several times a week, eventually getting good enough to get to finals in our state tournament in B division. Unfortunately, I also apparently don’t spend enough time working on quadricep strength. If you let your quads get weak, they don’t do a good job of holding your kneecap in place, and you can get dislocation injuries and pain.
It’s happened to me once before, and I was able to rest and restrengthen the muscles, and drove on. Now it’s happened again.
I’m kicking myself, because the exercises to keep this from happening are easy and quick; it’s just my own laziness that left this door open again. And if I can’t get things strengthened up, straightened out, and fully healed, I won’t be able to play in this year’s Corporate Challenge tournament. I dropped the ball last year and didn’t get to go; I don’t want to miss it this year.
So it’s quads every morning and night until May; we’ll see how it goes from there.
#1 by Grandma Wigdahl on April 1, 2010 - 3:57 pm
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Take good care of your knees! You don’t know how precious they are until they’re gone.
#2 by Luis on May 26, 2010 - 10:44 pm
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What are the exercises exactly. I have the same problem.
thanks.
#3 by Matt Wigdahl on May 28, 2010 - 3:35 pm
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There a number of good videos on Youtube. Search for “quadriceps exercises” and you’ll find a bunch.
The ones that work best for me are inner leg lifts — lie down on your side, put your non-exercising foot on the other side of your exercising leg at about the knee level, so your non-exercising leg forms a triangle over your exercising leg.
After this, lift your exercising leg up about 20 degrees or so and hold for 10-20 seconds. Do as many reps of this as you can, then switch sides.
Hope this helps!