That’s a very good thought. Thanks.

You obviously want to cool the tissue, but you don’t want to overdo it. If the tissue becomes white with pressure, but returns to red when the pressure is released, you’re good. If the tissue turns white and stays white with no pressure, you’re gonna get some serious secondary tissue damage when that thing swells back up.

You can apply ice to the popliteal fossa, as you would if you had a distal hamstring tear, but caution is warranted. A lot of cold or gel packs will cool the tissue much more than straight-up ice-in-a-bag packs. As you said, no more than 20 minutes of direct ice, especially in this delicate area. If in doubt, put a layer of towel between the ice and the skin. Stop if you experience any new pain radiating down the calf.

One thing I didn’t see, except in the links was mention of meniscus injuries. These commonly accompany higher-grade ligament tears (both intracapsular and extracapsular), especially when there’s a twisting force when the knee is injured. They can also happen independent of ligament sprains.

Another potential way to tear the meniscus is to load the knee while it’s in extreme flexion. Twisting will again exacerbate the injury. I’ve witnessed this happening twice while the person was trying to stretch their quads and hip flexors from seiza, leaning back and resting their weight the tops of their feet.

A meniscus tear is one of those things that won’t really get better without surgery. Movement and load tend to just widen the tear. The good thing (if you can call it that) is that when you tear your meniscus, you usually know something is sufficiently jacked to warrant seeing a doctor.