Knee injury

G

greeneyeddevil27

New Member
Hi dancers.

I'm a dancer and choreographer with a huge performance coming up in May, and I found out today that there's a strong possibility that I've torn the meniscus in my right knee, and that surgery may be a course of action.

Has anyone out there had this happen to them? How fast was your recovery? How much did you dance life suffer from it and from how long?

Please let me know, and thanks for your comments and advice.
 
greeneyeddevil27, I have had surgery for this. I think the answer to your questions partly depends on the severity of the tear, assuming you in fact have one. In theory a minor tear could be repaired (basically sewed back together), but I think the recovery time is longer for this because you can't stress the cartilage too much while it's healing. More likely, they will shave off the torn part. Another question is if you have any ligament damage.

Recovery time varies greatly. I know Ben Ermis (an American Smooth Champion) had surgery for this and was dancing (pro/am at least) at a competition two weeks after. My own recovery took about 6 months although my tear was somewhat severe (I believe this is longer than normal).

My advice to you if you have the surgery is to know that the critical phase of the whole process is the post-operative therapy and to stay laser focused especially during the first two weeks after the surgery. Try to learn about exactly what you will have to do after the surgery BEFORE you actually have the surgery.

Post operative therapy consists of two main goals: 1. increasing your range of motion (i.e., flexion and extension of the knee joint) as there's a good chance you will have a reduced range of motion coming out of the surgery and 2. increasing the strength of the supporting muscles (especially one called the VMO- vastus medialis oblique).

You should be back dancing in no time! :D
 
Welcome, lvd, and thanks for sharing your experience.

I have not had this, but a friend of mine does have a tear in her miniscus. She said she's had it for a long time and hasn't done anything, other than not do as much exercise as she used to, about it.

I have had a nagginge knee problem for about 5 weeks now, and went the Advil route, until it caused too much stomach pain. I have an appointment with a sports medicine place on Tuesday for an evaluation. I'm hoping it's nothing serious. In fact, it was almost feeling good again until last night when I went dancing (not ballroom..."girl" dancing).

Can you tell me what your symptoms are for a torn miniscus??
 
Ouch! mq. When you didn't mention it again, I assumed things were getting better. Let me know how it goes Tuesday, okay? :?
 
My partner tore both the anterior and medial mensci in his left knee. He also had a problem where the cartilage was peeling off the back of his left kneecap. He had surgery on April 1st of last year, and his doctor wouldn't clear him for dancing again until August, so that was four months. But his case might have been more serious than yours.

The one thing that helped tremendously was that he really stuck to his physical therapy. Even after the sessions the insurance company paid for were over, he kept doing the excercises on his own. We now joke that he's got "bionic knees." The knee is fabulous, hasn't given him any problems and he's been dancing and competing on it for 8 months now. He still does his PT-recommended stretching exercises before and after practicing.
 
I just cringed when I read your post, Laura. In fact, I can't even look at the knee pictures online with having a chill.

Let me know how it goes Tuesday, okay?
Click to expand...
I will. I thought it was getting better yesterday, in fact, did about 20 minutes of aerobics to test it out and was fine. My dancing at my lessons haven't bothered me one iota, but this week was the first week I gave jive a shot, and I didn't do much so as not to push it.

Knees are just a poorly designed joint!
 
Well we also stress them out and often with our lifestyle the unequal stresing out does not help...

Hey Laura! It would be useful to know the PT exercises your friend does for all of us I think. I know that with my reduced gym time a hard night of dancing can cause my knee to complain and I do know quite a few people with kneee issues...
 
Unfortunately it's really difficult to describe what to do in words, I'd hate to tell anyone the wrong thing. See, it's one thing to see in words what the excercise is, and another to do it correctly engaging the right muscles. During his PT they figured out that a lot of his knee problems were do to the fact that he walked and danced only using his hamstrings and his adductors (or was it abductors, I can never tell what he was saying). So his quads were basically doing nothing. He's since worked on using all his leg muscles in a more balanced way, and building up his quads a bit so that it's not just his knee that keeps him standing up. My point is I could tell you what he does, but it still might not help because of issues in how each of us personally use our muscles that lead to our own individual knee problems.

I had knee problems with the last two amateur guys I danced with (one of them being K. pre-surgery). Turns out that, according to my coach, I was actually supporting a good deal of their body weight. When K. got his knee fixed and learned to keep his head and upper body off me, my knee problem magically disappeared. Funny how that works.
 
If the guy is carrying his head and upper body weight way too far forward then it ends up on the woman. Especially if the guy is really tall relative to the woman.

Oh, and another thing: my Feldenkrais practitioner says that knee problems are often indicative of foot/ankle usage issues. She's working on re-teaching me how to walk and stand to help that too.
 
Interesting, Laura...I never really give much thought about my ankles. I'm pretty certain my knee problems are a result of overuse....doing step aerobics for 5 or 6 days in a row and then running on the off day. It's making me nutty now because I can tell that other muscles, in my calf, and my quads) are trying to compensate for the knee. And then, it'll be the other leg's turn.

So, out of curiosity, do you think latin/rythym is harder on the knees, or standard/smooth? I'm wondering if it's time to make a change.
 
I don't have knee problems, actually. At the beginning, they used to hurt when I straightened my legs and pushed the knee backwards, but now my quads are much stronger and I don't feel a thing. My hips, however... :? :?
I would say that latin is harder on the knees, because, though you have to bend them in smooths and keep them that way, the quads do the support. In latin, there's repeated motion that probably strains the knees.
But seriously, I don't really know. Someone more advanced would probably notice.

Twilight Elena
 
Well, I'm pretty sure jive has to be the worst on the knees. I just did it for the first time in 5 weeks the other day, and it wasn't really too bad. It was the pounding when I was out "disco" dancing with my friends that did me in. But, I don't really do much smooth or standard, so I'm wondering if there are knee issues with that. I know Laura's partner had some major problems...

My quads are my strongest muscles, in fact, it's kind of killing me that I can't do much exercising with them because they're not as toned as they were 5 weeks ago. Someone once told me if you do exercises that build up the muscles around the inside and outside of the knee, you'd have less problems, but I'm not really sure how to work those, other than that one machine that also happens to work the quads (legs bent and you extend them up).

I think we need a good orthopedic doctor on our forums!
 
A good personal trainer can help you develop the exercises you need. You could try a strength trainer from your gym, or a Pilates instructor with a good deal of dance experience.

We're not sure exactly how K.'s knees got torn up. His doctor says it wasn't from the dancing -- that the tears had probably already started -- but the dancing made it all a lot worse. In fact, K.'s doctor told him that if he didn't want to dance then he really didn't even need the surgery. He likes to hike, and swim, and do other outdoorsy things, and his knees never bothered him in his daily life -- the only bothered him when he danced. One theory is that the tears started 25 years ago when he used to do Theater Arts and Latin as well as Standard. When he quit dancing for 20+ years he just didn't notice any issues, and then when he started up again with his previous partner and then me they really started bothering him again. We do know that Quickstep hops and scatter chasse's etc. made the situation a LOT worse. In fact, his doctor says the one thing she doesn't think he should do is put a lot of that stuff into our quickstep.
 
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