Dave's Blog

Almost a year ago, I started getting back into badminton in a big way. Almost since the beginning, I’ve been getting pain in my knees. At first I shrugged it off as being unfit and overweight, I started wearing a knee support to help the pain, which it did but lately it’s been getting worse even though my fitness has come along leaps and bounds.

Normally, I don’t advocate trying to self diagnose through the internet, you’ll end up convincing yourself that you have some rare disease with 3 weeks to live or something equally unhelpful. But in this case, because the pain is so specific and directly associated with Badminton, I think I’m on fairly safe ground:

I think this sounds like Patellar Tendonitis, AKA “Jumper’s Knee”, the pain is just below my knee cap and I really feel it most when I’m limping up and down stairs.

I brought this up with some of the players at my club and received a number of different suggestions, all of which I’m going to try to follow, working on the principle that a problem is best tackled from many directions at once. Of course this is no good as an empirical study, but I get the impression that I don’t have much time to waste.

About Me
At present I play about 5 hours badminton a week, 2 hours on Tue, 1 hour on Thur and 2 hours on Fri. Additionally, I’m not a light person, I weighed myself this weekend and I come in at 21st 13lb, which funnily enough is exactly how much I weighed in January before I started all of this Badminton malarky.

Knee Support

As I said, I’ve been using a knee support during badminton for the past 10 months, so this alone isn’t ‘fixing’ the problem, although I cannot dispute that it helps. Those rare occasions where I forget the support and play anyway, leave me with a lot more pain the next day.

I’ve been using a Fortuna Neoprene Knee Support (with Open Patella). I’ve also tried both a Boots own version without the open patella (hole in front of the kneecap) and a velcro adjustable one, I went back to the Fortuna as I felt it helped the most. The reasoning behind the open patella is that it takes the pressure off of the kneecap whilst holding it in place and providing tendon support.

I’ve also just bought a Patella strap designed specifically for this problem, I haven’t had a chance to use it yet but I’ve tried it on to walk up and down stairs, which is when I really feel a lot of pain and it seems to make a difference. How much difference it’ll make during and after play, remains to be seen.

Epsom Salts
My coach suggested soaking in a bath with Epsom Salts. Ironically, living in Epsom, I had a really hard time finding any, so instead settled for ‘Dead Sea Salts’ which seem to be pretty much the same thing but three times the expense and ostensibly from the Dead Sea! I’ve used about half of the box now, soaking in a bath for half an hour after badminton, but I can’t discern any difference to my knees.

However, I no longer have dry skin on my elbows! Comparing the results versus the expense, this was a clear bust. I’m going to stick with Radox. I think the heat from the bath helps more than what happens to be in it.

Better Trainers

This should have been a no-brainer, however it still took me until September to splash out on some decent badminton specific trainers, having worn the treads off of the soles of the previous cheap pair I’d picked up from TK Max.

I opted for the Yonex SHB 102MX Men’s Badminton Shoes, which I picked up through Amazon for the kingly sum of £85, but don’t let this put you off, the difference was instant and well worth every penny. The extra cushioning on the sole has also made a big difference and I no longer find lunges and jumps as painful as with other trainers.

There have been other benefits to the trainer upgrade; I used to occasionally turn my ankle when changing direction quickly, never anything serious but painful enough to put me on the floor for a second or two, but the increased lateral support of these trainers have really helped and I haven’t had this problem since.

Gel Heel Cushions

The next logical step (haha!) from trainers was to try a pair of heel cushions. There’s not much to say about these, as we’re all well aware of what they do and how they do it:

Gel Max anti-fatigue heel cushions provide all day comfort for your feet, no matter what level of activity they are put through. The advanced gel and Poron design cushions every step and helps relieve heel, knee and lower back pain associated with foot impact and heel strike.

Again I was surprised that I hadn’t immediately thought of using inserts as part of the solution. I’ve been using these for a week and I’m already happy that they’re helping cushion impacts and reduce the stress on my knees.

I bought these GelMax Heel Cushions from Lloyd’s Pharmacy for £9 and I’m already tempted to get another pair.

Cod Liver Oil Tables
I remember my Nan taking these every day as part of her arthritis care, so I thought I’d give it a go too. I’m not quite man enough to drink a teaspoon of this vile ichor, so I’ve opted for the tablet based solution from Boots. Difficult to tell if they are making a difference really, but the effects are supposedly more widespread than joints from increased brain power, reduced risk of heart disease blah blah blah.

Whatever the reasoning, it’s good enough for my Nan so it’s good enough for me.

Glucosamine & Chondroitin Tablets

This is the big one, people at the club couldn’t quite remember the name of the tablets they were taking, aside from ‘gluco-somethingoranother’, but they came highly recommended as having made a huge difference. A couple of days and a long chat with a Pharmacist later, I was in possession of these tablets. They weren’t exactly cheap at £15 pounds for 20 days supply but I’m willing to give anything a go at this point:

Glucosamine is a naturally occurring substance known to play a role in the health and resiliency of joints. It helps maintain joint mobility and flexibility in conjunction with a healthy diet and lifestyle.

Chondroitin is a compound found in connective tissue that helps attract fluid into joint cartilage.

I’ve been taking 3 a day now for four days now so it’s too early to make any comments about about them. I’m quite put off by the fact that the text on the box is replete with qualifying language like ‘could’ and ‘may’, but the recommendation of others goes a long way with me so I’ll certainly give it a go.

Lose Weight
It always comes down to this, losing weight will reduce the load on my knees. However that’s easier said than done, but I thought I’d mention it as one of the things I’m going to try, although I’ve said this before.

Assessing the results
So those are the steps I’m trying to sort my knees out, I’m going to apply all of the above, with the exception of the Epsom Salts, and see whether my knees improve or not. I’ll report back in at the end of November as to whether any of this has made much of a difference.

As it looks like this badminton thing is not just a phase, I thought I’d best start a proper category and talk about it more. I was recently reviewing a friend’s blog and she structures things very strictly, making certain posts on certain days, I quite like the idea of this but at the same time I know that I’ll not stick to it with the same rigidity. I’m going to give it a go anyway and start trying to blog more regularly about badminton and what I’m doing and learning, all of this will be filed under the Badminton category.

I’m going to try to make a badminton post on a weekly basis on Wednesdays and see how things go from there.

The No Strings Badminton session tonight at Rainbow Leisure Centre was a complete farce. I don’t know if there’s some big publicity drive on at the moment, but since last week there’s been a lot more people coming, which ordinarily would be a good thing but tonight was so over subscribed that I left after an hour having played only 3 matches. The rest of the time was spent waiting around for courts to become available.

What really made things worse was that the guy organizing the session was pairing people up with massively different abilities, that was when he was there at all. My first game was with two people who had never really played before, which didn’t exactly work up a sweat. Speaking of the organizor, he disappeared for the last 20 mins that I was there, all the while more people were turning up wondering what was going on. There was no queuing system or pegging and people people trying to organize themselves into queues it quickly resulted in dissent.

All this is from an organization that boasts a lot more than it’s actually been delivering. Colour me distinctly unimpressed. I’m going to go again next week but I really hope they get there act together. If they don’t, I think I’ll complain as I was really enjoying playing on Friday night in addition to Monday at Ebbisham.

Quite annoyed.