I hurt my knees while swimming...is that even possible?

October 28, 2015 4:00 AM

I have arthritis in my knees and swimming has been recommended to me. First couple of days it was great but now my knees hurt a lot. I've been trying not to frog kick and to keep my legs straight but I may have gotten too excited and frog-kicked a few times. Is there a trick to this? How should I be swimming?
posted by shibori to Health & Fitness (11 answers total)

It might be worth joining a swim therapy class so you can get some guidance from someone who specializes in this sort of situation.
posted by jon1270 at 4:39 AM on October 28, 2015

Depending on what exactly you're trying to get out of the swimming you could put a kick-board between your knees and swim without kicking at all (just your arms). You'll be a lot slower but still get surprisingly good cardio benefits, and even holding your legs up against the gravity will build some muscle strength. Even doing this for part of your session may make a difference.
posted by shelleycat at 4:49 AM on October 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

you could put a kick-board between your knees

Depending on the pool, they might have special floaty things that you can hold between your knees which might help this also. I actually got some good suggestions for improving my stroke by watching some YouTube videos on how to move my arms and how to kick, so that might help. If you're doing the usual flutter kick you don't keep your legs completely straight but it's a very different thing from frog kick so it might be worth checking out some videos and make sure you're doing something that has the least impact on your knees.
posted by jessamyn at 6:31 AM on October 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

You don't mention what stroke you're doing. Frog kick is for breast stroke and straight legs are for front crawl/free style. I had knee problems with swimming in past so I canned breast stroke altogether and only do front crawl/freestyle. No more frog kick.
posted by fatfrank at 6:33 AM on October 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

I would stay at the side of the pool, put your arms out on the side of the deck, and just work on your kicks. With your body weight supported by the deck, you can concentrate on the kick itself without worrying about actually floating or going anywhere. That lets you kick as hard or light as you like, keeps your knees in a certain range, and gives you a better feel for what your knees need.
posted by Capt. Renault at 6:53 AM on October 28, 2015

Depending on the pool, they might have special floaty things that you can hold between your knees which might help this also.

If you're looking for these in a sporting goods store or want to ask pool staff about them, they're called pull buoys.
posted by dorque at 7:09 AM on October 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

This is what most pull buoys look like.

If you don't want to take a class, you could also sign up for a few private lessons. If you haven't swum in a while, it might be really helpful to brush up. I did this a few years ago, and my private teacher was great.
posted by OrangeDisk at 8:08 AM on October 28, 2015

Best answer: I can't do frog kick anymore either (also because of a bad knee), and I can't do front crawl or other strokes with big overhead movements (bad shoulder). I alternate between a flutter kick with a kickboard, something like a backstroke but with arms kind-of sculling (with not too much rotation at the elbows), a sort of careful side stroke, and my best approximation of a dolphin kick (with arms just straight ahead).

I feel most comfortable with breaststroke, though. When my knee's not too bad, I go ahead and do it, but keep my knees close together and just thrust my lower legs downward in a sort of vertical thrashing motion, no rotation. (Like the "narrow" kick here, but even narrower.) It takes a lot of force to move forward this way, and it is ugly, but it doesn't hurt my knees.
posted by cotton dress sock at 8:52 AM on October 28, 2015

Best answer: Seconding the suggestion of private lessons, or at least an assessment of your stroke by an instructor, particularly if you’ve never had any kind of professional instruction. It helped me so much when I was learning and again when I was ill. They can also design workouts around your injury.
posted by lambchop1 at 9:12 AM on October 28, 2015

Best answer: Another thing in swimming that can hurt your knees (and feet and ankles and hips) is pushing off the wall at the beginning of a lap. Many people who are being careful about a leg injury while swimming totally forget and push off the wall really hard.
posted by hydropsyche at 3:27 PM on October 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

I tore some cartilage and ligaments in my knees swimming competitively about 25 years ago. Coach kept yelling at me to whip my kick harder (frog kick, breaststroke was my best stroke), so I did. Never did like that guy. When I was able to walk, I had all kinds of fun with my knees, including arthritis, multiple patellar tendon tears, and multiple ligament strains and sprains.

The trick to all this is to figure out what your knees will tolerate. When I was able to walk, I'd joined the water aerobics class at my local gym. Very low impact, but still very much a workout. If you have one available, I'd wholeheartedly recommend joining it to get some of the benefits of swimming, but with some different leg movements to give your knees variety. I've found that if I only swim, my knees will hurt from doing the flutter kick or dolphin kick over and over and over and over, but if I do a more varied workout, they hurt less.

One tool I've found to be incredibly valuable is a pool noodle. You can sit on it and bicycle, you can use it as a pull buoy, you can use it for a variety of arm and leg lifts, kicks, pulls, etc.

A note of caution: you may have started out a bit overenthusiastically. When I started working out after a long hiatus, my brain insisted that I could do far, far more than what I was actually able to. (100 squats? Sure! Jumping jacks? All over it! Chest press my body weight? Absolutely! Genius, right there. I managed 25 squats, 3 jumping jacks, and ~1/10th my body weight.) Back off your intensity and length of your workouts, then build back up gradually. The pool's not going anywhere, and neither are you.
posted by The Almighty Mommy Goddess at 4:46 PM on October 29, 2015 [2 favorites]