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Tenor Knee

2K views 8 replies 6 participants last post by  Steve on the web 
#1 ·
Just posting this to see if i am alone! I have recently found i have a problem when playing my tenor that results in the back of my right knee being tender and painful. I play with the horn on the right and put all my weight on my right leg. Even worse i found i was locking my knee and titling my pelvis back thus putting more strain on it. i do martial arts as well and thought it was an injury from that, it was getting so bad that i couldn't put much weight through it, but for some reason i put the tenor to bed and got the alto out- problem went away.

I think i've solved it now by paying attention to how i stand (just one more thing to think about).
 
#5 ·
You must be very tense playing the tenor, compared to the alto?
Besides that, you should have that knee examined. Seems too little strain to give you that kind of trouble. Think of basketball players twisting their bodies, with their brand new stickers "glued" to the floor.
Having said that, perhaps just a few simple exercises to strengthening the supporting knee muscles will help.

Good luck!
 
#7 ·
Funny, I have just the opposite problem. My right knee and lower leg get stiff when I play tenor sitting down. I sometimes tense them to keep the leg out of the way of the bell.

Rotating the neck and mouthpiece slightly help to keep the horn at the proper angle and relieve the problem. I assume it comes from never practicing sitting down.
 
#9 · (Edited)
aikisax,

There are 2 ways to analyse your knee problems :

Knee pain - actually most knee problems bring about pain in the front or at the sides; pain at its back usually originates from inflammed bursae or a popliteal cyst (with a swelling that comes and goes).

Locking - as suggested by some others above, this deserves more attention and thus the need of a proper clinical/radiological assessment. It signifies something (usually a cruciate ligament or a meniscus, or debris from a degenerated joint) is torn and got trapped inside the joint space - a consequence of significant energy of trauma. Understanding that, you can see playing a tenor sax should not be the culprit - unless you've got hit by that! :toothy10:
 
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