A common physical condition developed by basketball players is patellar tendinitis, also known as jumper’s knee. This is simply inflammation of the quadriceps tendon which crosses the knee joint to attach to the tibia. The patella (knee cap) is embedded within this tendon. Basketball involves numerous starts, stops, and quick changes of direction, not to mention all the jumping and landing, so the quadriceps tendon just gets overused.

My sophomore year of high school I developed patellar tendinitis that sidelined me for a few days of the season and bothered me for a few months. I was able to manage it well enough to avoid missing any more of the season, and eventually recovered fully. I have not had to deal with any knee pain since.

The first thing I had to do was rest as much as possible. This meant no extra shooting or dunking after practice, and the days we had off I took completely off. After the season I tried to limit myself to playing ball twice a week. In addition to that, I iced my knee after every period of activity. The preferred method of our athletic trainer at the time was to freeze ice in a disposable cup, rip the cup off, and then rub the block of ice directly on the quadriceps tendon.

I also used to exercises to strengthen my tendon. The first was just basic body squats. The athletic trainer instructed me to perform these keeping my knees back as much as possible. This requires sitting back into the squat with the weight on the heels instead of lowering straight down. This technique puts far less stress on the knee joint but still puts it through a good range of motion, so the tendon is worked. I did numerous sets of 10 repetitions daily. As my tendon strengthened I added weight to the squats for increased strength, still maintaining form as well as possible. Nowadays squats are the foundation of my strength training; I do them correctly, and I have had no pain. The second exercise I did was seated single-leg raises. I performed these with my hip externally rotated (toes pointing out).

What this does is puts the burden of holding the knee extended primarily on the vastus medialis muscle of the quadriceps group. I learned from the athletic trainer that basketball players often develop a stronger vastus lateralis than medialis, which can pull the knee cap slightly out of line, resulting in inflammation of the patellar tendon. This makes sense if you think about all the sideways cutting and shuffling done in a wide legs position in basketball; these movements use the lateral (outside) muscles of the thigh more. Seated leg raises help to correct the muscle imbalance between the two vastus muscles. I also did many sets of 10 of this exercise every day. Any strength exercise where a foot works in its own frontal plane, such as step-ups or lunges will also help muscle balance. Here is a video of the