Small Meniscus Tear Advice (Grippy floors?) + Update

[ShadowDance]

I'm sorry for my dramatic reply, ShadowDance. I wrote this way because many other dancers will read your thread, too. I sincerely hope it's just a temporary capsular irritation that will calm down with rest, avoiding unsuitable surfaces, and taking a care.

My medical history: I tore my left cruciate ligament, which wasn't detected by the MRI. I was a manic dancer and didn't take care of my body. After six months, I was dancing on bare bone because there was no cartilage left. Plastic surgery and cartilage cell transplantation followed, all without success. Since I was then pivoting on my right knee, the posterior horn of my medial meniscus tore. It was reattached, and the blood supply also was reconstructed. Nevertheless, my right knee hurts just as much as my left. Ambitious dancing is a thing of the past for me. With a lot of diclofenac and two knee braces, I have some social participation.

That's alright man. I'm very anxious about injuries. I had to quit BJJ after 4 years due to concucssions. I feel like I'm always unlucky.

I am a high lvel musician in a metal band but do suffer some RSI symptoms that flare.

Now Im feeling like dance will be the next thing to go due to a knee injury. I worked through my disc bulge and am able to dance and compete with it.

But I just get so scared reading about meniscus tears... It just seems like basically if it is white zone it is never going to heal and even if it is mild, will alwatys be there, require strengthening, could get worse, surgery and then suddenly I have arthiritis in 10 years...

I'm only 29 and feeling devatstated. I want to continue competing in Standard and Latin. I actually only started dancing 3 years ago and fell in love. I train 5 days a week around 2 hrs each time.

 

[fiesta0618]

Now Im feeling like dance will be the next thing to go due to a knee injury. I worked through my disc bulge and am able to dance and compete with it.
...

I'm only 29 and feeling devatstated. I want to continue competing in Standard and Latin. I actually only started dancing 3 years ago and fell in love. I train 5 days a week around 2 hrs each time.

As much as we all here have been loudly cautionary to you, I think I can offer something encouraging as well.

The story you tell here is one of extremely serious training, driven by a deep passion. I know what that's like--I was a competitive runner through college, and I approached my running training the same way. I want to share with you one of the most important and valuable lessons I learned from that experience:

Whenever your plans seem ruined, there is always an alternative way to make progress towards your goal.

It is all too easy for us to get into a training rhythm and have a progression plan in mind, fixate upon it, and feel totally lost when even the smallest barrier prevents us from executing as envisioned. However, if we can get past the disappointment, it actually takes only a little bit of cleverness to come up with a plan B. Not as ideal as plan A, of course, but still makes good progress. And if plan B also goes south? Plan C, D, E. And so on.

******

Taking your case as an example. If you're trying to be gentle on your knee, Plan A (5x2 hours floor time) is probably not the best idea. You'll probably want to reduce that.

But that doesn't mean you need to reduce the total amount of time you spend training! Consider these other lower-impact activities that directly contribute to dance skill:

• Connection & communication exercises
• Range-of-motion training
• Body awareness drills
• Musicality practice
• Upper body strength training
• Low-impact cardio (cycling, swimming, etc)
• Competition psychology exercises
• Mindful performance visualization
• Technique book study

A passionate dancer like you who trains as intensely as you do is very likely already doing at least a little bit of all of these. Plans B through Q, therefore, are as simple as changing out some of your floor time for an increased budget for the items on this list.

And I would lay a big bet that you wouldn't even experience a slowdown in your dance progress under plans B to Q--you will simply be expanding different attributes of your skill at different rates than right now. And all of those attributes matter!

Bottom line, @ShadowDance: even in your worst-case scenario, you are not at risk of totally ending your dance career. You just might have to get a little creative about how you engage. And if you are very clever about it, you won't even have to slow your growth!

 

[opendoor]

...I think I can offer something encouraging as well..

Respect, you've got the highs and lows of our hobby figured out!

 

[Tracy]

My experience...I tore my meniscus 9 years ago. I luckily went to a sports doctor immediately. I was told I could continue dancing but it would hurt but I could not further injure it. I competed 12 days later (with a giant brace and lots of pain). I am still competing. I did physical therapy, acupuncture and some sort of stem cell injections (wish I could remember exactly). I would heat and do a long and slow warm up starting with 10-15 min of walking and ice and elevation at the end of the day. I took inflammation reducing medicine (first prescription and then just advil). I still take hyaluronic acid and glucosamine daily. I no longer need the walking prior to warm up. I was told I would need a total knee replacement in 10 years. I have occasional ache but nothing unmanageable. I haven't needed to return to the doctor after the first 6 months or so but it took probably over a year to get to "normal" although it was a new normal as my knee is not as strong as before. I cannot bend too low on that leg and recover. But I have adjusted choreography to compensate. I hope I can offer some hope. You are young, so if you need surgery your recovery has much greater odds of full recovery. I know some high level pros who had surgery and returned to win big. My advice, find a sports medicine doctor as they understand the mentality.

 

[Happyhorsie]

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of finding a competent, highly reputable orthopedic surgeon to consult with. Preferably get 2-3 opinions if you can afford it. I’ve had multiple meniscus tears (along with ACL injuries). There are more and more therapies being developed for meniscus repair, but not all are yet widely available. If you do need surgery, a highly skilled surgeon paired with good PT will make a huge impact on your post surgical outcome. I’ve had 4 meniscus tears so far, and all were able to be repaired and I don’t even notice them anymore (the ACL reconstruction was another story, unfortunately). Note that chances of a successful surgical repair will diminish with time because the tear may degrade so time is of the essence here. Regardless of whether or not you need surgery, you should advocate for a PT prescription and go to regular PT; strengthening your knee will be critical to preventing further injury and maintaining your ability to dance.

 

[Happyhorsie]

Also, I would really recommend you go see a knee specific orthopedic surgeon. They will immediately be able to tell much better than someone who does not specialize in knees. Every time I’ve had a knee injury, the orthopedic surgeon has been able to tell me much more about my knee injury than my PT, primary care doc, or sports med doc. They just see so many more knees in a day than non-specialized doctors and a good one will be able to advise you if a non surgical approach would be the best. Like opendoor, I also had some knee issues initially not diagnosed by doctors/mri and it resulted in a delay in my treatment.

 

[dncergrl2]

I tore each knee once. And wore away the meniscus with activity and overuse. I have excellent PTs, who told me that there was a study comparing surgery with PT/ exercise. After one year there was no difference in outcome. So, I’ve been religious about keeping my knee, and hip muscles super strong. I’m dancing and competing way beyond what my imaging would predict. I never dance on sticky floors without modifying my footwear. You can buy these rings of fabric that go over shoes at the ball of foot. I think they are called shoe covers. I always have them in my dance bag. My knees are too precious to damage more.

 

[Joe]

After one year there was no difference in outcome.

What about longer term?

 

[dncergrl2]

What about longer term?

What about longer term?

I don’t know the research, but I started tearing and wrecking my knees about 35 years ago and I’m still dancing open Latin comps. Had recovery times of up to a year with each big injury. My physios are excellent and profs in the PT college. Strength exercises are part of my daily routine. I also get massage. A tight IT band can get a knee tracking wrong. And muscles compensate with injury. The overworked ones need to sometimes be needled with IMS to relax while the weaker ones need to be strengthened. Sometimes foot orthotics are needed to keep the knees aligned. Sometimes weight has to be lost to reduce stress on joints. All this is outside the scope of surgeons. I’m lucky, but I’ve tirelessly searched out a great PT team with awesome diagnostic skills to help me. And then I do what they tell me to do.

 

[dncergrl2]

I don’t know the research, but I started tearing and wrecking my knees about 35 years ago and I’m still dancing open Latin comps. Had recovery times of up to a year with each big injury. My physios are excellent and profs in the PT college. Strength exercises are part of my daily routine. I also get massage. A tight IT band can get a knee tracking wrong. And muscles compensate with injury. The overworked ones need to sometimes be needled with IMS to relax while the weaker ones need to be strengthened. Sometimes foot orthotics are needed to keep the knees aligned. Sometimes weight has to be lost to reduce stress on joints. All this is outside the scope of surgeons. I’m lucky, but I’ve tirelessly searched out a great PT team with awesome diagnostic skills to help me. And then I do what they tell me to do.

PS. The shoe slide things are called Dance Socks.

 

[joy]

I tore each knee once. And wore away the meniscus with activity and overuse. I have excellent PTs, who told me that there was a study comparing surgery with PT/ exercise. After one year there was no difference in outcome. So, I’ve been religious about keeping my knee, and hip muscles super strong. I’m dancing and competing way beyond what my imaging would predict. I never dance on sticky floors without modifying my footwear. You can buy these rings of fabric that go over shoes at the ball of foot. I think they are called shoe covers. I always have them in my dance bag. My knees are too precious to damage more.

I also don't dance on sticky floors without modification. It's not worth it.

And the human body is amazing at recovery if you give it a chance and the proper workouts.

 

[j_alexandra]

I also don't dance on sticky floors without modification. It's not worth it.

Sticky floors are a definitely a problem for me. A couple of years ago, I did a comp with a floor so sticky, we should have scratched. TBH, none of us (Teach and 2 students) has completely recovered from 2 days of competing on a floor that grabbed our feet. My knees took a couple of years to get back to not-hurting. Not worth it.

This past weekend, the floor at Empire was good for Latin, not so good for Standard. I basically had to go out there and intentionally, thoughtfully, and carefully not do a lot of the technique I've worked on for years. Did this warm my heart? No. But I like my knees/ankles/hips intact.

At my age, it takes much longer to recover from injury than it used to. Pass.

 

[DanceMentor]

I have a problem with my big toe joint. Unfortunately I'm not able to do standard at the level I could before due to this problem. I'm looking into getting some surgery at some point but I've also learned to enjoy dancing in other ways and I'm still very happy. There are surgeries available and they can give me a little bit more movement in the joint back but There doesn't seem to be much available that would actually truly solve the problem.

I know it can be sad and frustrating in all kinds of different emotions dealing with things like this. You actually might have something that's a little more easier to fix and it's not uncommon for things like a meniscus tear to get back to a good enough state where you're fine.

There can be some mind over matter here but not always. The brain can be very sensitive to pain and by giving it a lot of attention can actually heighten the sensation. Part of resting and not dancing on it so much can also be training the brain to not think about it so much and getting involved in some other activities that keep it moving but you get where you're not thinking about it. It could be something as simple as doing bicycle or stationary bike for cardio for a little while.