I have an old injury in one of my knees (tore 2 ligaments skiing 2 years ago) and my other knee is weak too... due to abuse whilst coping with really injured knee being locked at 15 degrees for 1 year. Anyway... recently, my abused knee has been hurting again... and I couldn't work out why. The pain has been coming and going for about a week. Well... today I stood up from my piano practice... and it was agony. I am doing my Grade 5 this term and and still learning my 3rd piece (c3) which is very fast and requires pedal. I am wondering if it's the pedal making my knee hurt? I suppose I could be clenching my knee in blind panic. I have only just started this piece... and am desperately trying to get it up to speed. I use the pedal for my B piece too... but I am not panicking so much in that piece. If it is...would it help if I wore my knee support whilst practising? What else can I do? I am doing more practice than before due to the exam......
I suppose..... I need to stop panicking and relax my knee....?

If you can afford it at all I'd reccomend also a visit to an osteopath, they are great at sorting out things like this, best to go to someone reccomended to you by someone you know.
Wearing the knee support I guess can't do any harm, may not help but it will not make it worse I think.
all the best

Short-term - wearing a knee support will do no harm, and you may find it helps.
Try not to put too much weight through your knee while pedalling, as force through a bent knee really will put a lot of strain on your ligaments. You should make sure to keep your weight in your seat and just rest your heel on the floor. ??Pianists correct me if I'm wrong please - I come at this from a medical view point.

Medium to long term - do some simple quad exercises to strengthen your thigh muscles - these muscles provide a LOT of support around the knee joint and quads in good knick will vastly reduce the strains and stresses put on the ligaments of the knee joint. But don't try doing this while your knee is sore - rest it for a bit till it has recovered from any recent strains. You can aid its recovery by taking care to stand from sitting with most of your weight on your good leg, and go downstairs one at a time putting your bad leg down first, then bringing your good leg down beside it onto the same step. Going upstairs its good leg first (think bad leg to ######, good leg to heaven).

I hope this doesn't sound patronising - its not meant to be.

oops - it seems I'm not allowed to say that!
Wasn't meaning to be profane.
Try "bad leg to Hades"

Thank you for the advice... I do go up and down stairs good leg first..... I will think carefully whilst pedalling about where my knee and heel are.... and I will try to rest my poor knee. Maybe my heel wasn't on the floor? It really hurts today. I did do a fair amount of exercise on quads etc when I was having physio.... but when my knee didn't hurt any more (and when it was no longer bent)... I stopped exercising it. I do walk a fair bit (have a dog) and that doesn't bother it..... but I have no excuse...I do know what exercises to do. I suppose it was just a case of laziness when there were no symptoms.

I took my bad knee (skiing injury time) to the chiropracter but felt he didn't really help that much ,except the acupuncture was pleasant, (although he did wonders for my back). Is an osteopath much different?

Thanks again for the medical and piano pedalling advice. I appreciate it.

I *think* (disclaimer - not a medical professional!) that an osteopath pays more attention to the general ergonomics of the whole body. I am seeing one at the moment about a problem with my neck due to spending too much time playing the piano and at the computer (more time at the computer than the piano really, if I'm honest!!) I have found it to be very helpful and very concerned with what you do to your body during everyday life.

When pedalling make sure you sit far enough away from the piano to let your heel rest on the floor, so that all the action is in your ankle as a pivot. One common mistake is to sit too close and then to have to lift the entire foot/leg when pedalling which will put strain everywhere in the leg......or even if the entire leg is not lifted, trying to keep pedalling with the heel on the floor when sitting too close would be painful.........

Go up good leg first, but come down bad leg first.... that way you don't have all of your body weight supported on a bent knee each step down.
I suspect you meant that this is what you do, but I just wanted to clarify. Coming downstairs is very demanding on the knees and requires a lot of ligament and muscle support to stop your whole leg from sliding off the top of your lower leg - the knee joint is a ridiculously bad design, being like a tennis ball sitting on top of a pedestal, held together with a few elastic bands!!

That's the advice my mum got from the hospitals when she had her bad hip and knee, and following the replacement operations. It makes it easy to remember..... (the heaven and h-e-l-l bit)

Sorry to hear you are in pain.
A knee support woould be a good temporary thing. BUT, go to your GP and have it checked before you go to any other practitioners. A physio would give you some exercises to do to strengthen the muscles.
Beverley.

I agree with the above. Very unusually for me I have been suffering from the most excruciating lower back pain this weekend to the extent I haven't been able to sit down without wincing and I'm unable to bend forwards. I just about managed to sit through five lessons this evening. I think I was caught out with bad posture when I was bending to stack the dishwasher, exacerbating a slightly misjudged movement in one of my dance exercises last Tuesday. I'm finding a heated lavender 'beanbag' is hugely comforting.

I think pianists, and all musicians, have to be as carefully trained as dancers in learning how to develop ease of movement and good co-ordination, to avoid injury. I sometimes suggest to my adult pupils that using the pedal is a bit like using the clutch on the car (other foot though)! Like Chocolatedog has already said you need to sit far enough away but comfortable enough to keep toe on the pedal and your heel on the floor to keep control. I tell the younger pupils to keep their distance by making there elbows into Ls for Learners!

Hope the knee recovers soon Clari - right now I sympathise - pain is not good.

BB

an osteopath is very different from a chiropractor

anyway, you have had lots of great advice, hope you get better soon

Not specifically any knee fixing advice but if it does need resting then it's perfectly possible, and often benificial, to do a lot of your practice without using the pedal. Helps you to spot all the non-legato bits and ensures you're not 'getting away' with anything. You can still work on just about everything else without putting the pedal in if that's the problem ; doesn't sound as nice to listen to whilst you practice but that's not the point of practising .

Thank you for all of the support and kind messages.... Went to my lesson today (leg in knee support... it is a good knee support- suitable for skiing)... and Chocolatedog... you were right. I am sitting too close to the piano. My teacher suggested putting a small book underneath my heel at the "right" height. It helped.... I didn't leave the lesson in pain. I might look a bit odd going into an exam with a book to put under my heel!!!!! She also suggested I slow the piece down for a bit (I'm missing some pedalling in line 3 apparently... so need to slow it down to get that right, before speeding it back up)... so then hopefully I'll be less tense when playing the piece. I had no real problems at the end of lesson (but did spend quite a lot of the lesson doing aural)... but hopefully all of the above will make my knee better. If it doesn't, I'll go to the docs. Only mild twinges today.

Thanks again for the advice... you kind people.