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Comment by 01100011 | Hacker News Reader

Good article. I've heard in the past that cartilage can heal but for some injuries it's just not practical. Some meniscus tears can heal but the recovery takes a year of slowly increasing activities.

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The information is most useful to those who avoid any activities that might cause a bit of knee discomfort.

You can toughen up your knees by gradually ramping up the stimulus over time, and high impact sports of youth won't necessarily prevent one from being able to run a marathon in their 70s.

Can't argue with that. I've been watching the "knees over toes guy" on youtube and trying out the exercises, plus doing a lot of light hiking, and it's really helped with my troubled old knee.

If you like the "knees over toes guy" exercises, I'd definitely recommend signing up for his online coaching program for a couple of months. The Youtube videos are a bit scattered and there are some nuances to the progressions that don't come through very well, plus the feedback on your form is helpful when starting out.

I also started from the Youtube videos but I got a lot more out of it after I started doing the full program with coaching.

Thanks, I've been thinking I'll do that once I'm ready to commit a little more. I did just get his new book.

I played volleyball without knowing how to execute the pancake dive and smashed my knees on the floorboards repeatedly in my 10s. I became obsessed with MMA and eventually got a bucket handle tear in my knee at athletic prime. Sometimes the knee refused to straighten and I had to get physio to hoik it back straight. Every step was a pain. Instead of surgery to staple the meniscus down or cut it out, what primitive medical procedure is that?!, I had acupuncture to treat the pain. I think I was lucky in not having the deeply inserted needle sever a controlling nerve from knee to toe. I wouldn't do that again in a do-over. I heard by word of mouth a statistic that 50% of knee surgery don't improve the knee so I didn't have that done. I swim to get exercise or walk gingerly.

I don't know whether the "knees over toes guy" exercises would help your specific problem but that guy had multiple knee surgeries when he was young, and injuries to the other knee where he skipped recommended surgery, and now his knees are amazingly capable. Might be worth checking out. It starts very gently and you never work through pain. All the physical therapists I could find talking about it were very positive on the program, as long as you take it slow.

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