How I Prepared For Knee Ability Zero

Mar 29, 2023

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KOT Zero was so painful I had to stop. I went back to the drawing board and did the following everyday for two months.

sitting seiza style for 30 minutes everyday (scattered throughout the day)
sitting in a deep squat position for 30 minutes everyday (scattered throughout the day)
standing in a split position for 20 minutes everyday day (scattered throughout the day)

I peppered in other simple stretches whenever pain would occur, but not often enough to list as a contributor to my recovery.

I went from knee swelling daily to increasing my vertical by 4” inches and doing daily 2 hour full-court runs.

I’m now back to zero with no issues.

Advice for dealing with knee pain

I figured that most of my lower body muscles were stiff and tight. So stretching gave them space to move. Most of the pre-zero advice didn’t help (walking backwards, regression, etc.)

Stretching daily was literally all I did. Even the stretching was painful at first. I didn’t realize how tight everything was. I now do dead hangs for my upper body and back and is making progress there too.

Strengthening creates tightness which must be countered with adequate stretching. We often gloss over stretching and go into strengthening. I try to do a couple hours of it everyday.

I stretch when I wake up and before bed. The pain went away after a week or so, and it took about a week to sit seiza style a month to properly deep squat. I still deal with minor pain on the deep squat but I can hold my position for 30 minutes uninterrupted now.

Can you elaborate more on “standing in a split position”?

I saw a video of a guy who wanted to learn to do a split (https://youtu.be/E9mM2StxkCo) so he practiced getting lower and lower until he could drop into one. I basically tried to imitate him.

I’m lower than before, but no where near a split, but it helped my hips and quads tremendously.

References for those who want to go deeper.