An analytical man by nature and profession, Greg McKenney, a San Francisco accountant, has calculated how much money he saved because of his decision to do the Essentrics program every day: $30,000.
That’s the amount of revenue the self-employed accounting consultant figures he would have lost had he undergone two operations recommended by his doctors to end his knee pain. The first involved the surgical breaking of his tibia (shinbone) to correct a slightly bowed left leg, and a second to rebuild the damaged cartilage of his left knee.
But after discovering Classical Stretch on his local PBS station, Greg avoided both surgeries and a long, problematic recovery. “Now I have my life back and 22 minutes of joyful exercise every day was the ‘investment’ that it took. Miranda, I’m your biggest fan,” Greg wrote in a 2015 email. “I shudder to think what my life would have been like if I hadn’t found Classical Stretch.”
For fifty-one-year-old Greg, exercise had always energized his life and kept him physically and mentally healthy. As a former cruise ship fitness director, he derives joy from movement, especially windsurfing and kite surfing. Most recently, he has become enamored with kite hydrofoil boards, surfboards that can ride a couple of feet above the water supported by a hydrofoil.
About two years after he began kitesurfing, Greg started experiencing knee pain, a sharp pain—perhaps a 7 on a scale of 10—in an area about the size of a table-tennis ball. Walking downhill or down stairs was especially painful. Greg tracked his pain in his health diary, talked to his doctors, and researched the surgical options they offered. By the spring of 2012, Greg had endured arthroscopic surgeries on both knees. Each operation was carefully scheduled so that postoperative physical therapy would be over and conditioning complete in time for the windsurfing season that runs from mid-March to mid-October in San Francisco, where Greg lives. But late in the summer of 2012, after an extended summer hiking trip, he started experiencing what he described as a severe tightness in his left knee.
His doctors took a closer look at Greg’s left leg and determined that it was slightly bowed and was therefore putting a “substantial incorrect weight-bearing” stress on the knee. His leg alignment was off by only 1 or 2 percent, but doctors believed that was enough to put pressure on the medial compartment of his knee. One doctor recommended he wear an offloading brace on that left leg to see whether it would correct the problem. Greg was told that windsurfing would be allowable if he didn’t go at it too hard.
The brace did seem to alleviate some pain, but it wasn’t comfortable and would slip, requiring adjustments. The major problem, however, was that it increased his risk of deadly injury when he was windsurfing. And by December 2013, Greg was anticipating the osteotomy surgery that would see the surgical breaking of his upper tibia and the careful resetting of the bone into a straighter alignment. To help ensure that the bones knit together in proper alignment, a sophisticated exterior metal frame called a hexapod cage would be connected to the bone by wires or pins to allow for regular adjustments during the recovery period. “I would have been on crutches for four to six weeks and had this metal frame around my leg for four to six months. I would have missed at least eight months of windsurfing and kitesurfing, not to mention the inconvenience,” Greg noted.
All of that didn’t happen because fate intervened in dramatic fashion just weeks before the scheduled surgery: Greg’s appendix burst. It was a hair-raising episode that Greg was fortunate to survive, according to his doctor. After emergency surgery and three nights in the hospital, Greg bounced back to reasonable health. Although his doctors thought he was fit enough for the leg surgery, Greg wanted to regain his full health before submitting to more scalpels and another round of general anesthesia.
And so on January 4, 2013, Greg was lounging on his living room couch, flipping through channels, when he happened to find our program on PBS. “I thought it was so cool . . . and exactly what I needed,” he recalled. “I did the workouts every day after that, and in a few days the pain in my knees went away, I kid you not.” He stopped wearing the offloading brace, began practicing the workouts regularly, and soon decided that he didn’t need the osteotomy surgery. After his introduction to the program, Greg did two workouts every day for some time. Now he does a workout every morning, as well as whenever he feels stiff or his knee tells him he has played too hard.
Severe tightness is caused when the muscles shorten from either extreme concentric strength training or atrophy from a sedentary lifestyle. Obviously in Greg’s case it was caused by excessive concentric training of the muscles associated with his tibia (his shins). Every time he landed on his kite board, his muscles would contract to support the impact. This would also explain why walking down stairs or downhill on San Francisco’s hilly streets would cause pain. Each downhill step further contracted the already stressed tibia muscles, pulling on the attaching muscles and tendons.
The exercises rebalanced and eccentrically stretched the tibia muscles, lengthening them to relieve the pulling on the knee. When the pulling stopped, the pain disappeared. In addition, the eccentric strengthening benefits offered needed support to Greg’s knee, further relieving stress on his knees.
The fact that Greg could enjoy 100 percent relief from his knee pain through correct rebalancing eccentric exercise indicates that the 2 percent bowleggedness was not the cause of the problem. If in fact the bowleggedness was putting “substantial incorrect weight-bearing” on the knee, exercises could not have reversed that. Logic tells me that if the doctors’ diagnosis had been correct, Greg’s pain would have continued.
We must keep in mind that as advanced as medicine may seem to be, it is a long way from being perfect. Some operations are absolutely necessary to save our lives; however, other surgeries are very much optional. Greg found that correct exercise solved his pain problem, which saved him from the invasiveness of an optional tibia surgery as well as the cost.
As patients, we must use our discretion and look at all the options before deciding whether to have invasive procedures, take potentially addictive drugs, or undergo other measures that may carry significant risks as well as potential benefits.
Greg is a perfect example of injury caused when muscles have been concentrically strengthened and unbalanced. Fortunately, he was young enough that the joint damage was minimal, leaving him pain-free—but only after he successfully stretched, strengthened, and rebalanced his legs.
The workout in this chapter is designed for all the many causes of knee pain, from arthritis (one of the leading causes) to injury to recovery from surgery. The exercises will stretch and strengthen the muscles of your feet, ankles, calves, quads, and hips. They are designed to release any tension in the various muscle chains related to the knee pain. Make sure to have a chair nearby for support.