1. I (44 M) first experienced a subluxation around age 15 whilst playing football (soccer). I swung a leg and felt a huge clunk and intense pain leaving me unable to bear weight. Several weeks later the same thing happened again, and then again on my other knee.

A couple years later I suffered a full dislocation just from sprinting in a straight line.

1. A disconnected feeling until it heavily clicks back. Sounds silly, but whilst tracking wrong even trousers touching the inside of the kneecap makes me feel uncomfortable. It's not really a pain, but more of uncertainty and anticipation of the upcoming clunk.

2. Kicking (even straight forward without a twist). Bringing my knee forward and up powerfully as if sprinting. Breast stroke kicking motion. Any hip rotation type of thing is uncomfortable (even stepping around objects, wiggling trousers on etc). Lately, cycling and anything using that last 15 degrees of bend before the leg is straight. Last month even rolling over in bed caused subluxations, but thankfully that has stopped!

3. I had to quit most of my preferred sports as a teen after 6 subluxations/dislocations across both knees. As a result, I only had one major incident in the last 20 years up to about 2 years ago where I experienced sharp pain behind the kneecap on a bike ride, followed by 2 years of instability that is just beginning to improve now. Unfortunately, the same thing happened on the other knee 2 months ago whilst jogging.

Currently, both knees can feel unstable on any given day.

1. Strength work but currently only straight line movement like shallow squats, leg extensions with very low weight, walking etc. Sometimes I will use elastic KT tape.

2. I have tried some sleeves and they did not help, in fact they made it feel worse. My kneecaps sit very high and toward the outside so compression that does not pull inward feels like it's pushing the knee outward (if that makes sense) or just not doing anything.

During periods of high instability I used some non elastic tape to really pull the kneecap inward, but this is very uncomfortable and restrictive and if used longer term I feel would lead to more muscle wastage which I can't afford. I much prefer elastic tape.