During the early stages of any injury rehab, taking extra time and care to lay a foundation is critical to long-term success. Our most successful athletes are the ones who complete the basics with ruthless precision!
For this reason, there are no new exercises this week. Spend this week foam rolling and doing the knee isometrics every day, repeating what you learned in week one. This will have huge benefits in the later, more advanced stages of the program.
Introducing the Athletic Heat Map
While you continue with these exercises, take an opportunity to learn how to track your training load. This is a crucial skill in remaining pain-free after the seven week program, something we have written about here.
One of the most crucial parts of successfully managing and beating your Osgood pain is how you handle your sport, competition and training load. learning how to assess and make steady smart progressions in your training load is a really valuable skill, something you will learn how to do here in week 2 and then expand again in week 5.
I'm currently not playing any sport, how do I return?
Returning to sport after dealing with Osgood Schlatter pain requires a careful, progressive approach. The key is to find the level you can maintain and build load tolerance and training volume.frequency gradually over weeks and months while continuously monitoring your symptoms and completing the program closely to build strength and rehabilitate your knee pain.
These tip can help:
- Start with low-intensity, controlled activities like walking, stationary bike, and sport-specific movements in a controlled environment (e.g., passing drills for soccer, shooting practice for basketball) that put minimal stress on the knee.
- Begin with shorter sessions (15-20 minutes) and gradually increase duration before increasing intensity
- Complete your daily routine from this program before your activity, training, or sport
- Use the next morning pain and stiffness as a guideline - if pain increases beyond your baseline for more than 24 hours after activity or when waking up the next day, reduce the intensity or volume next time
- Use the Athletic Heat Map (introduced above) to track your response to different activities
- Always warm up thoroughly with dynamic movements and cool down with gentle stretching
- Returning to team training sessions before jumping into competitive play
- Plan for "active recovery" days between training sessions to allow tissue adaptation
I'm currently still playing sport, but it is painful, how do I adjust?
Managing Osgood Schlatter pain while continuing to play requires smart load management and modifications to keep you active without worsening symptoms.
- Communicate openly with coaches about your condition and limitations - most will appreciate your proactive approach
- Reduce training volume by ~50% initially, focusing on quality over quantity (e.g., participate in skill drills but reduce scrimmage time)
- Modify high-impact movements - limit jumping, cutting, hard kicking (planting) and sprinting by either reducing intensity/effort or total number of efforts
- Use the pain scale as your guide: activities that cause pain above 5/10 during activity or pain that persists more than 24 hours after should be modified
- Consider playing modified minutes in competitions (starting with 50% of normal playing time)
- Consider a knee strap, KT tape or compression sleeves to provide comfort for the knees (see the Osgood store for options)
- Prioritise recovery: proper sleep, nutrition, and completing your rehab exercises consistently
- Track your symptoms using the Athletic Heat Map to identify which activities and volumes you can tolerate
Motion is lotion. Staying active and being strategic about your activities rather than complete rest is a much better long term approach to solving Osgood (and most injuries), the weakness and atrophy that comes with complete rest is far more risky than staying (even the smallest amount) active.
Activity: Map your training loads
A heat map shows you how much sport you are doing and its distribution over the week.
We have built a heat mapping spreadsheet specifically for junior athletes to complete.
Enter your weekly sporting commitments into the spreadsheet and fill in the number of minutes the session lasts and a rating of perceived exertion (RPE)*.
*RPE is an individual’s measurement of how hard a training session was. 1/10 would be an easy walk, 10/10 being your hardest sporting session ever. Some sessions may have a mix of hard and easy components, but most athletes have a pretty clear idea of an overall score. Get them to use that score.
We recommend athletes create a copy of the spreadsheet and complete a new heat map every school term in order to track ongoing loading and determine if there is enough rest incorporated into the week.
There is no magic number for weekly training load, as we all handle training stress differently, but keep an eye out for large spikes or changes, and aim to have at least one day (ideally two days) per week that have light training volumes.