Overuse problems of the knee :

Osgood Schlatter and weight training - - Posted by juham (juham), 15 September 2003

Hi,

I'm posting this hoping someone will find it useful.

I was 11 years old when I was diagnosed as having Osgood Schlatters. My doctor said that it will go a way as soon as my puberty is over. Ten years later I still had it. I did exactly what the doctor ordered: avoided running and jumping, but OS didn't go a way. It actually got quite bad.

I managed to get a job where I didn't have to stress my knees at all, hoping such a job would help me to get rid of the dicease. Two more years passed, but I still had OS in both knees.

I dragged myself to a gym and started body building. I didn't really expect to be able to train my legs at all. But soon I discovered that I could actually do some leg exercises. In fact, 30 minutes of walking caused me more pain than doing couple of sets of leg exercises with rather heavy weights. I kept training my legs and added more weights whenever I felt my knees agreed.  After some years of training, I had doubled the power in my legs. I'm not sure if my knees felt any better, but I'm sure they didn't get worst either.

After ten years of training, I was nearly tripled my training weights.  And my knees could cope with it.

I am now 42 and I still train my legs once a week. I still have OS, but it doesn't bother me much. I have no problems in playing ice hockey once a week, for example. And due to weight lifting, I can skate faster than many guys with perfectly healty legs. In fact, I have newer felt better (nor looked better, says my wife ).

Of course, I can't be sure that it was weight training that did it for me. Maybe my knees would have healed anyway, with or without weight training. But I did rest for two many and it didn't have any impact to my dicease.

If you are diagnosed as having OS, and nothing else seem to help, it might be worth trying body building.  

Regards,
Juha

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