Protect Yourself From Winter Sports Knee Injuries

By Douglas Dennis, M.D., board-certified orthopedic surgeon

Those who love winter sports anxiously await their opportunity to get out on the slopes and enjoy skiing, snowboarding and other winter activities. Most people will return home in the same condition they left. Some will fall victim to knee injuries, in particular ACL and meniscus tears, that will leave them watching from the sidelines for quite a while.

What is an ACL?
Your ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) is critical to knee stability, while your meniscus, a disk-shaped piece of cartilage, serves as a shock absorber and secondary stabilizer. Both can be damaged as a result of twisting movements, and the risk grows as you age—especially for the meniscus which is more prone to degenerating. There doesn’t seem to be a genetic link to these injuries, but women are more at risk to have ACL injuries due to their knees’ mechanics.

How to Prevent an Injury
The best way to prevent ACL and meniscus injuries is to embark on a strength and flexibility program before the winter sports season. Strengthening your quads and hamstrings is key to injury prevention; using a stationary bike and elliptical trainer and doing exercises like leg extensions and hamstring curls is important. A stretching program including plyometrics (to develop fast, powerful movements) and increasing proprioception (the ability to sense the position, orientation and movement of the body and its parts) is vital for injury prevention.

While on the slopes, it’s important to make landings with your knees semi-bent. Many knee injuries result from landing on locked out, or hyper-extended legs, which put your knees in a precarious position.

Treating an Injury
If you hear or feel a pop of your knee, and notice immediate swelling, there’s a good chance that you’ve torn your ACL. Your knee may feel unstable and you should seek medical attention. The course of treatment will typically be determined based on the stability of your knee. If it’s stable, rehab is an option, but if it’s unstable, you may need arthroscopic surgery.

We reconstruct the ligament during an outpatient procedure, and the typical rehabilitation period is from six to eight months. The good news is that with proper treatment and rehab, you’ll be back to normal and not susceptible to re-injuring your ACL, but you may be at higher risk for tearing your meniscus due to the resulting biomechanical change.

When you have a sharp pain on the inside or outside of your knee, and it fills with fluid after 24 hours, it’s likely you have a meniscus issue. While you’ll feel better when you rest the knee, it’ll be painful when you use it. The pain won’t go away without treatment, repairing the meniscus or debriding it (taking out the torn pieces) during outpatient surgery. Rehab is a bit shorter than for ACL issues, typically three to four months.

You hear a lot about high-level athletes having knee problems, but they can happen to anyone, especially weekend warriors who haven’t prepared their bodies for rigorous activity. If you train properly, you can lower your risk of being injured, and keep yourself on the slopes.