One of the observations I’ve had during my career is the occasional client who had a medial meniscus tear and has absolutely no idea how they tore it. Granted, there is a percentage of people who walk this earth that have meniscus tears and don’t have any pain. But, I have noticed that a good percentage of the clients I see who fall under the category of “I have no idea how this happened?” spend regular time in the gym.
From my own personal experience, I have at least two episodes of bilateral medial knee pain after performing prone hamstring curls. During each of these episodes, it was at least a few weeks before I stopped having pain.
I propose that open chain knee curls put a great deal of strain of the posterior horn of the median meniscus, mainly due to the attachment of the median hamstring tendons. This may lead to a tear or the aggravation of an existing asymptomatic tear. This is likely related to lack of joint compression and approximation with knee curls, unlike leg press, lunges, and other closed chain lower extremity exercises.
High weight-low repetition regimes may also increase the risk of these types of medial meniscus tears, and low weight-repetition regimes may actually safer and may lead to a less risk of injury. My suspicion is that the risk does actually increase with age, as the likelihood of asymptomatic meniscus tears are common this population.
After spending some time researching if this has actually been studied in any of the available health sciences literature, I was unable to locate any reference that identified prone or seated hamstring curls have a risk factor meniscus tears. If anyone has any references that do, please contact me at [email protected].
VPC