If your problem is personal, i.e you’re dealing with joint issues, unless you’re suffering from a muscle-wasting disease or are over the age of 50, reading about stuff will be low yield.
Long term joint pain is solved by:
strengthening muscles in order to not put a strain on “weak” joints [evidence: solid]
Hormetic effects joint usage [evidence: weak clinical, but look at e.g. people doing yoga, I’d say this is an issue of people not studying the correct demographics]
Zone 2 training, aka cardio, allowing you to more efficiently partition fuel to muscles and thus do more movement without suboptimal muscle usage [evidence: I’d assume moderate but unsure]
Stability training [evidence: not good because everyone disagrees what exactly this involves, but basically all physiotherapists are doing some form of stability training so it’s obviously useful | overall you can pick a specific older technique and you will get solid evidence, but newer stuff might actually be better, but less tested]
Now, can you optimize past that? Sure you can.
But unless you are already doing, say, 2 hours of zone 2 4-5 times a week, 30 minutes of resistance training 2-3 times a week (the kind where you are in excruciating pain by the end, i.e. proper resistance training not aerobics masquerading as resistance training), 20-40 minutes of daily stability training (could be morning yoga, could be stretching recommend by a therapist, could be whatever).
Then reading up on joint pain will be useless.
It may be that you are an athlete, in which case discount the above, if you’re doing 4-6 hours of effort per day on average then a better model of movement is probably the key. But even then it might make more sense to take a scientific approach and just try different things and be quick to quantify (e.g. don’t look for joint pain after trying a new style of movement, look for proxies in your blood).
But again, if you’re not an athlete, by reading up on this stuff you are simply running away from the real solution, which involves the hard work of building a pattern of 1-2 hours of varied exercise every day.
Stability training [evidence: not good because everyone disagrees what exactly this involves, but basically all physiotherapists are doing some form of stability training so it’s obviously useful | overall you can pick a specific older technique and you will get solid evidence, but newer stuff might actually be better, but less tested]
I did a little quick searching for “knee stability training protocol” and.. found a few things that looked pretty obvious. Quads, hams, calves, etc. More or less what I’d expect. I don’t suppose you have any secret sauce beyond that?
resistance training 2-3 times a week (the kind where you are in excruciating pain by the end, i.e. proper resistance training not aerobics masquerading as resistance training),
Ie, “train to failure”? If so, I was under the impression that training to failure is now considered less effective/useful.
(e.g. don’t look for joint pain after trying a new style of movement, look for proxies in your blood).
I’m not an athlete, but what would the proxies be?
I did a little quick searching for “knee stability training protocol” and.. found a few things that looked pretty obvious. Quads, hams, calves, etc. More or less what I’d expect. I don’t suppose you have any secret sauce beyond that?
No, it’s really very much about your individual body and where you have lacks, you need an in-person trainer to be able to see this and over time as you move more you’ll become more aware of your body and be able to say “Ah, it’s x area that’s too stiff, or activating too much, or that should be working but isn’t or whatever”
Ie, “train to failure”? If so, I was under the impression that training to failure is now considered less effective/useful.
No, training to failure is a bad idea in that it’s both unhealthy (muscle injury, joint issues) and unideal for muscle growth. But from the perspective of most people “training to failure” is actually “training to a few reps close to failure” because outside of people that are fairly advanced it’s close to impossible to push yourself to the gun-to-the-head limit. If you want you can try “train until your form fails and you pinky-promise are unable to keep it no matter what”, and realistically that should suffice.
I’m not an athlete, but what would the proxies be?
standard markers of inflammation, ESR, CRP, etc. Or you could even look for the curve of cortisol response and clotting factors with a venous catheter, I guess. But again, not at all relevant outside of an academic curiosity unless you are training to be an athlet (which is unhealthy and should be avoided).
No, it’s really very much about your individual body and where you have lacks, you need an in-person trainer to be able to see this and over time as you move more you’ll become more aware of your body and be able to say “Ah, it’s x area that’s too stiff, or activating too much, or that should be working but isn’t or whatever”
Thank you for the info! Do you have any thoughts on how to evaluate a trainer’s ability to discern this sort of thing? I’m happy to work with trainers and pay for expertise, but my general sense is that standards of research in sports medicine aren’t great.
standard markers of inflammation, ESR, CRP, etc. Or you could even look for the curve of cortisol response and clotting factors with a venous catheter, I guess. But again, not at all relevant outside of an academic curiosity unless you are training to be an athlet (which is unhealthy and should be avoided).
Are you implying I shouldn’t [overly] worry about chronic inflammation? I’m pretty confident there is an inflammatory component here—icing and voltaran do seem to help. It’s been long enough (3 months) that I’ve started to think about trying a curcumin supplement and/or just cooking with tumeric+black pepper a bunch.
Oh, not at all, chronic inflammation could be a thing.
I’m just saying that tracking how your exercise routine affects chronic inflammation is a very min-maxy type of things.
Chronic inflammation could very much be a macro problem that leads to joint pain.
Did you already test basic stuff? Like immune cell counts, homocysteine, uric acid, CRP, fibrinogen, ASLO blah. Basically, a standard blood panel an obsessed GP would give you? If not I’d certainly start with that.
I mean, for all you know this thing could be caused by eating too much meat, or gluten intolerance, or whatever (not saying those reasons are especially likely, just examples of “dietary problem that is easily caught on tests and can be easily resolved)
If your problem is personal, i.e you’re dealing with joint issues, unless you’re suffering from a muscle-wasting disease or are over the age of 50, reading about stuff will be low yield.
Long term joint pain is solved by:
strengthening muscles in order to not put a strain on “weak” joints [evidence: solid]
Hormetic effects joint usage [evidence: weak clinical, but look at e.g. people doing yoga, I’d say this is an issue of people not studying the correct demographics]
Zone 2 training, aka cardio, allowing you to more efficiently partition fuel to muscles and thus do more movement without suboptimal muscle usage [evidence: I’d assume moderate but unsure]
Stability training [evidence: not good because everyone disagrees what exactly this involves, but basically all physiotherapists are doing some form of stability training so it’s obviously useful | overall you can pick a specific older technique and you will get solid evidence, but newer stuff might actually be better, but less tested]
Now, can you optimize past that? Sure you can.
But unless you are already doing, say, 2 hours of zone 2 4-5 times a week, 30 minutes of resistance training 2-3 times a week (the kind where you are in excruciating pain by the end, i.e. proper resistance training not aerobics masquerading as resistance training), 20-40 minutes of daily stability training (could be morning yoga, could be stretching recommend by a therapist, could be whatever).
Then reading up on joint pain will be useless.
It may be that you are an athlete, in which case discount the above, if you’re doing 4-6 hours of effort per day on average then a better model of movement is probably the key. But even then it might make more sense to take a scientific approach and just try different things and be quick to quantify (e.g. don’t look for joint pain after trying a new style of movement, look for proxies in your blood).
But again, if you’re not an athlete, by reading up on this stuff you are simply running away from the real solution, which involves the hard work of building a pattern of 1-2 hours of varied exercise every day.
I did a little quick searching for “knee stability training protocol” and.. found a few things that looked pretty obvious. Quads, hams, calves, etc. More or less what I’d expect. I don’t suppose you have any secret sauce beyond that?
Ie, “train to failure”? If so, I was under the impression that training to failure is now considered less effective/useful.
I’m not an athlete, but what would the proxies be?
No, it’s really very much about your individual body and where you have lacks, you need an in-person trainer to be able to see this and over time as you move more you’ll become more aware of your body and be able to say “Ah, it’s
xarea that’s too stiff, or activating too much, or that should be working but isn’t or whatever”No, training to failure is a bad idea in that it’s both unhealthy (muscle injury, joint issues) and unideal for muscle growth. But from the perspective of most people “training to failure” is actually “training to a few reps close to failure” because outside of people that are fairly advanced it’s close to impossible to push yourself to the gun-to-the-head limit. If you want you can try “train until your form fails and you pinky-promise are unable to keep it no matter what”, and realistically that should suffice.
standard markers of inflammation, ESR, CRP, etc. Or you could even look for the curve of cortisol response and clotting factors with a venous catheter, I guess. But again, not at all relevant outside of an academic curiosity unless you are training to be an athlet (which is unhealthy and should be avoided).
Thank you for the info! Do you have any thoughts on how to evaluate a trainer’s ability to discern this sort of thing? I’m happy to work with trainers and pay for expertise, but my general sense is that standards of research in sports medicine aren’t great.
Are you implying I shouldn’t [overly] worry about chronic inflammation? I’m pretty confident there is an inflammatory component here—icing and voltaran do seem to help. It’s been long enough (3 months) that I’ve started to think about trying a curcumin supplement and/or just cooking with tumeric+black pepper a bunch.
Oh, not at all, chronic inflammation could be a thing.
I’m just saying that tracking how your exercise routine affects chronic inflammation is a very min-maxy type of things.
Chronic inflammation could very much be a macro problem that leads to joint pain.
Did you already test basic stuff? Like immune cell counts, homocysteine, uric acid, CRP, fibrinogen, ASLO blah. Basically, a standard blood panel an obsessed GP would give you? If not I’d certainly start with that.
I mean, for all you know this thing could be caused by eating too much meat, or gluten intolerance, or whatever (not saying those reasons are especially likely, just examples of “dietary problem that is easily caught on tests and can be easily resolved)