Stretching with Pain

One of the reasons I didn't do several stretches while injured was that the stretches hurt, and we all know that stretching should not hurt, right?  Well, actually wrong; this was the key to me getting better.  Michael, my PT, had me start doing standing quad stretches.  Having ITBS, I felt pain on the outside of my knee when I did these and I got nervous.  I know what a healthy stretch feels like, and I was feeling specific pain in my knee.  He asked me the pivotal question, "When you stop doing the stretch does your knee still hurt?"  My answer was no, it didn't.  He said that as long as it didn't still hurt when I stretched that I was okay.  He said that the insertion point of all the ligaments attaching on my knee/tibia were what I was feeling. 

I continued to stretch with his rule: if the pain didn't continue I had stopped the stretch, then I was good to go.  For years I hadn't done the quad stretch because it "hurt."  Little did I know that this stretch, besides my PT assisted stretching, was the key to me getting running again.  The kind of pain I am talking about is not a 9 on a scale of 1-10, but more like a 6 or 7--it hurts.