This is my story and it may help you too!
I'll start with a little history about my self. I started bodybuilding when I was 17 years old after being inspired by Arnold Schwarzenegger (Like most people my generation).
I trained hard for about 5 years and then I started to compete in competitions in Australia. I competed for about 15 years with out any injuries apart from the aches and pains associated with hard heavy training.
I am now 47 years old. I have been training for a while now (I hate working out just how many years that has been). For the past 10 years I have been the Regional Manager for Anytime Fitness and recently the General Manager of World Gym Albury.
When I turned 40 years old I had some form of injury but for the most part I was able to train around them until 6 years ago. I started to get a little pain around my left knee and I started to have trouble doing squats. Even getting up and down stair was giving me a lot of incredible pain.
I could no longer train so I decided to go to a Physio for help. After several different treatments and several different Physios nothing was helping. I was finally sent for an MRI and they found that I had Chondromalacia Patellae. Here is a picture of what I am talking about.
On the left you will see a normal knee (See picture above) and on the right you will see what my knee looks like. The symptoms where extreme pain in the front of my knee cap and some swelling. I could also hear my knee grinding and some times when I sat for a while and stood up the patella would get stuck between my Femur and Tibia.
On top of all that my IT band was extremely tight(See picture below)
This image is a side on view of your leg (See picture above). Because the IT band was so tight it was pulling my joints out of alignment so the patella would not track properly.
So is what did!
Firstly I took a year off of weight training and started my rehab. First I had to try and release my IT band and this is how I did that.
I performed the IT band release roller once day (See picture above). I started out aiming for 5 minutes each leg. The first couple of weeks it was so painful that I could only do a minute at a time but over weeks I increased it to 5 minutes each side morning and night.
While I was doing those exercises I started to go swimming and ride my stationary bike in a addition I was taking Fish oil and lots of eggs and Salmon.
I included Isometric exercises such as Wall Sits (See picture below)
I did these 3 times per week and tried to hold for as long as possible and increase time as the weeks went by.
These are called Glute Bridges (See picture above). I performed them 3 times per week for 3 set of 12 to 15 repetitions.
The static lunge (See picture above) is when you stay in one spot and lunge down as far as is comfortable for you. I could only go down a little bit but increased the depth as I got stronger and the pain wasn't to much. Perform 3 times per week with 3 sets of 12-15 repetitions.
The good news is now I can do everything that I used to do like the Back Squats, Dead lifts and walking lunges. My knee will never be the same again, however I have less pain and have strengthened the muscles surrounding my knee.
If you are having any type of knee pain please go see a Physio as soon as you can and before you try any of the above exercises.
Thanks for reading and I hope this helps.