Two meniscus tears. Two operations. And then years of pain afterwards, long after everything was supposed to be healed.
I did what I was told. I rested it, I did the exercises I was given, I waited. It never properly came right. I genuinely thought that was my lot now, that this was just what my knees were going to be like.
The problem was never that I wasn't training. It was that my training wasn't specific enough for me, so I kept feeding the exact thing that was hurting me.
When I finally looked properly, at my whole leg rather than the sore bit, two things stood out. My feet were weak. And my hips were sitting really internally rotated.
That combination meant my knee was taking load it was never designed to take, every single step. Nobody had checked either of those things. They'd scoped the knee, rehabbed the knee, and sent me on my way, and the actual cause was above it and below it the whole time.
Sort those out and the knee finally got a break. That's when it changed.