Protect Your Knees

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Protect Your Knees 1: The Sudden Crisis - My left knee

Name	Description	Flash
Protect Your Knees 1	The Sudden Crisis - My left knee	Watch
Protect Your Knees 2	The Shocking Resolution - My other knee	Watch

Protect Your Knees - My Experience

These pointers describe my personal experiences; I have no medical qualifications and they shouldn't be taken as medical advice.
By staying on your toes and the balls of your feet, you can generally avoid impact on the knees.
When your feet, ankles, and calves get stronger, you can still impact the knees if you lock the joints and push up strongly
You can generally correct this by pushing your butt back to move your center of gravity.
When you move your weight further behind your knees it forces them to flex because of the angle of your thighs.
Also be aware sometimes you can 'step through' on your elevated heel and calf, straightening and putting stress on the knee
Here's a link to a skeletal view of the knee and a pictorial of how the joints work mechanically; on that same page, click on The Joints at the top to read a description of how the joints work; click on Synovial Joints to read a more detailed explanation of how the joints are lubricated. Click on the picture of the hinge joint to read a description of a unique feature of the knee joint. Here's a muscular view. The more I look at this view the more I'm convinced my soreness was from the ligaments and tendons covering and going through the patella (kneecap) rather than the knee itself.
In general, if you feel a sharp pain anywhere or anything becomes really sore, you should stop immediately. Also for a minor pain you can't jump around.
You have to learn your own body so you can judge for yourself, but in general, don't try to jump around a pain late in a workout when you're fatigued. Take it as a sign you're done for the day.
Don't hesitate to skip a day if you have a more than normally sensitive area from the day before. Use caution on the following day; probe around the edges until you can be sure.
Except the one sore knee I had early on which took a couple of weeks to resolve, I've never had any problems lasting over two or three days.
I've never had a problem persist between sessions except the normal soreness you might feel from any type of workout.
I've had a few false alarms: my ankle rolled over once when I wasn't jumping and one leg gave way for one jump one time. Both those incidents were well over a year ago and I was jumping twice a day quite often, so it was probably muscle fatigue. And of course the first time I had sore ankles and the first time I had sore hips I was afraid they were going to be a problem, but they weren't.
Avoid soreness by relying on muscle memory to learn new moves instead of drilling on them.
Some areas may need to be loosened up when you warm up. Recently the ball of my right foot is generally a little slower to wake up, so I have to work around it until it does. Generally I start getting impatient and think "Geez, I hope I'm not going to have to cut it short...", I get distracted and shortly it's all warmed up, but I don't really notice when.
JumpRock can give you many hours of sheer pleasure besides adding a lot of quality hours to your life. Don't chance missing out due to injury. Err on the side of caution, especially until you know your body. Then listen to it and learn when to push and when to back off.

Any advice given reflects the experiences of myself and acquaintances over the last 30 years to the best of my recollection and under no circumstances constitutes medical or professional advice. There is no guarantee of accuracy, completeness, or the approriateness of any information or advice on this site or any site linked to.