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  First thing to do is give it a little time off and see if that helps.  Sometimes a little rest is all that you need.  If you have already done that, make sure you take the necessary steps (stretching quads/psoas, hamstring strengthening, vmo/glute activation, myo release) to iron out any kinks in the way things are supposed to work.

  If the pain is mainly during landing, low depth drops focusing on really absorbing the force through the glutes can help a lot.  This is also one of the times box jumps can help, just make sure to focus more on the height of the jump and elevating the hips, not picking the knees up. 

  Other than that, you may want to add in some explosive hip hinge movements like kettlebell swings into your routine, and really master the hip hinge movement pattern.  Learning to start the jumps from the hip, and absorb the landings in the hips can take a lot of stress off the knees. 

Lance, thanks for the reply.

I may need to give a little more detail and communicate my needs a little more clearly.  I have rested and my pain is not caused by overuse or acute injury.  It is a chronic condition that manifested a few months ago and I have been taking necessary steps and only recently (last week) started jumps again.  I do not plan to continue jumps while I have the issue as it aggrivates it too much.  I am a daily reader of mobilitywod.com and have rollers, lacrosse balls, jumpstretch bands etc. to fix my issues.  I also take fish oil, glucosamine, and NSAIDS/ICE after aggravating activity.

  Thats all real good stuff.  Tonic knee flexion exercises like high rep leg curls nearly ALWAYS help with any athletes who have knee pain, regardless of the cause, so you may want to include that as well. 3 x 30 done 3 x a week works great.  Other than that, make sure the vmo is firing and tracking the knee, tkes are good for this purpose, you need to do them directly prior to lifting and  jumping though.

I experience the pain during loading of the leg which I experience during the pre-jump stretching/loading phase.  I'm a 2 leg jumper.  Other than strength training and explosive hip drive exercises, is there any gain to performing low intensity ankle hops, line hops, star drill that can still benefit me for VJ?

I'm thinking I already have an answer in my head due to my percieved condition/training "level" and the answer is yes, those drills will help.  Anything specific to recommend or that you've found most beneficial in the low intensity category?

Thank you once again!

 Yes, all those drills you mention will help as long as they arent aggravating the knee.  You want to eventually fix whatever is the root of it though, so you can move pain free again.  The focus on the hip hinge will help, however youre going to have to learn to load that way as well, since thats where the pain is manifesting itself.  Heres an old post from kellyb on that topic as well that explains a method he uses to get more of the hip hinge involved in the  jumps.

 " Also here's a drill I like to do. Bend your knees just slightly and bend down and put your hands on your shins about halfway between the ankle and the knee. From here try to jump only using your glutes, hamstrings, and calves. In other words you want to dig your heels down and back into the floor to drive you up and don't bend your knees much at all as you descend so that you take your quads out of the movement."


As far as other exercises you can do, I would definitely do the drops as long as they dont hurt.  You can really focus on landing correctly when you isolate that part of the movement.  If single leg stiff leg hops dont hurt, those are good too.

Good luck with it man, keep us posted on how youre doing.

Thanks again for the reply.

One thing that I haven't tried yet is direct hamstring work.  I didn't use to do it, relying on my lunges, stepups, full squats, deadlifts before.  Never had this problem.  Maybe im older/lop-sided now and need some.

This is what i'm gonna do starting today.

Ankle hops
Drops
Hang Snatch
Squat
Leg curls
Upper body.

I was gonna incorporate some one legged RDLs or regular RDLs or something but i'll try the curls first.

Hey Lance, just an update:

For a couple of weeks I was adding the ham curls while continuing to squat and deadlift once a week each while performing low intensity ankle hops, some depth drops.  My knee wasn't necessarily getting any better, possiblly even worse.  So I am actually off of squatting and lower leg workouts for a little while to give it some rest.

I am still playing some recreational softball and basketball.  With the gym activity gone, the game days don't hurt much or at all.  It's definately some wierd tightness/pulling that is causing mal-tracking in the patella area.  For a few days after the gym it would act up even extra probably because of the fatigue on the muscles not tracking properly.  On random days with no activity it would also act up.

I really wanted to focus back on training again with reactive work etc, just hoping I can get past this soon... although it's been awhile now.