For at least a year, my daughter Charlotte–age 12–has complained of pain in her knees. She said they hurt the most when she was doing lunges in gym class. My sense was that her teacher was pretty good about emphasizing proper technique. We used to do a lot of lunges but we stopped doing them because of Charlotte’s knee pain. We were still doing some leg strengthening exercises, but today we had probably our worst day with her knees.

Charlotte has added that she has pain in both ankles and her achilles. Some guesses about causes of the problems:

1. She’s a young kid growing and it’s common to have pain in the knees. However, what about the ankles.
2. She is overtraining and since I resigned from my high school coaching position she has been training on playground courts instead of gym floors. I have noticed my own knees and back give me more trouble training with my daughters on concrete.
3. To save her favorite basketball shoes from getting outside dirty, Charlotte has been training in more cross trainer / running type shoes.

I will research some of these key areas: overtraining, young athletes, girls, knee pain, and ankle pain.

We probably need to take some days off and that will give me more time to research some aspects of getting Charlotte’s knees and ankles to feeling better.

I imagine I will be able to find some physical therapist related exercises to help alleviate some of what is causing the pain.

I can adapt our strength and agility type training to focus on the core and put less pressure on her knees.

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