I used to have really bad knee issues due to flexible flat feet, mobility issues in the ankle, knee and hip, and lack of inner leg muscle activation. All of which are fixed thanks to the mobility wods out there!

Part of my work through all this involved Kstar’s Mulligan therapy where you rotate the tibia internally while keeping the femur in place. This helped a lot, but some things have been happening that I wanted to discuss.

Say I get down into a squat position for the 10 minute squat test. I’m down there, I’m getting loose, pushing my knee’s out, working my hip flexibility, etc.   I decide to stand up. I brace my body, engage my glutes, tighten my core, ensure I’m in good position, then before I try to raise myself, I load my hamstrings as best as possible. 

As soon as I begin rising, I will hear popping, moving, and crunching sounds from either of my knee’s. The movement is very minimal. Absolutely no pain. But the sounds and volume of them is initially alarming. Granted these sounds never happened during my mulligan therapy…but I feel like the same kind of movement is happening. Somehow I feel that when I pull with my hamstrings, they’re pulling on my tibia’s and are lining everything in my knee up properly. However to do this, some adjustments apparently need to be made, and during those adjustments the crackling and popping occur. 

2 years ago when I first had knee problems and a PT recommended that I strengthen my VMO using a resistance band attached to a post and behind my knee. I put most of my weight on the leg with the band and simply pull back. When I first started doing this, I would experience similar movement and sounds. Again, no pain. Very similar to the recent events occuring.

I was just curious if this was normal? 

I’ve seen other people post about noises in their hips, but the knee is a more complicated joint so I wanted to make sure these aren’t signs that I should be taking action against.