Minor knee pain

[yuri]

I'm currently involved in a 12 week mma plyometrics workout where I do weight training in the morning and plyometrics in the evening about eight hours later. Before I warm-up and do my stretches I have some pain in my patella at the top of my knee cap. Once I am warmed up I feel no pain. I started to even do some resistance band exercises thinking that my abductors or adductors need some more strength. Do you know is most likely causing this pain and what exercises for other muscles can I perform to strengthen them and solve this.

[Heidi]

Biomechanical problems of the knee joint usually cause pain which gets gradually worse, rather than only at the beginning of exercise as you describe. This is mu reason for thinking this may not be the case.

I think the first thing to do would be to stretch regularly throughout the day, all the muscles surrounding the knee (quads, hamstrings, calf, groin etc). If the pain eases after you warm-up ot may just be tight muscles, especially quads causing the problem. Get some sports massage too, this will highlight any such problems.

[JC13]

I'd recommend stretching too. maybe even pay a visit to a physiotherapist to see if a massage or what they may identify as a problem.