Popliteus muscle strain

Over two months ago, I strained my Popliteus muscle on the back of my knee.
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I first noticed it after a day of crack climbing (makes sense why it would happen), but it has continued to affect me ever since whether I'm climbing or not. I've been to two different physical therapists who have both confirmed the diagnosis, but not offered anything that has been able to help me significantly.
Have you experienced something similar? Exercises that helped you recover? It's still affecting me in everyday life almost three months later and I can barely climb. Any thoughts appreciated.

I am currently going through the same issue. My injury involves the strain of popliteus and plantaris in the back of the knee. What has helped for me has been staying away from crack climbing and overhangs (two of my favorite styles). Vertical sport climbing has been all I can comfortably do. My PT uses a technique called dry needling, seems to help. Overall the recovery process has been slow, but I have noticed improvement in the last two months. My tendon still slips a little after a certain degree of extension, but it is not as severe or as painful. Hope this helps, at least to offer my sympathy. Injuries are no fun, but prolonging the healing process because we're unwilling to provide a environment for tissue repair isn't the solution.

After more than a year of persistent pain and general discomfort in the back of my knee, it seems that I have mostly resolved the problem. More research revealed that popliteus issues are common among road bikers, often associated with seat repositioning. At the time of initial injury (crack climbing) I had been bike commuting consistently for 2 years, and even though I did not reposition my seat near the time of onset, I am now fairly certain that my bike was the main cause, though aggravated by climbing. This past summer I took a month off of bike commuting, and during that time my knee felt much better. When I returned to the bike, the pain came back within the first week. I have since lowered my seat about a half inch, pulled the seat forward on the post, and have been pain free for months now. I am also more mindful of my body position on the bike when I ride.

This seems obvious in retrospect, but it was really hard to figure out. At the time I was convinced that it was climbing-related. The injury certainly was aggravated by climbing... particularly by heel hooks and crack climbing. I didn’t have the choice to change my commuting habits so my main action was to climb less, particularly avoiding those types of moves, though this only gave mild success. Even though it wasn't debilitating, I was still affected by it on a daily basis and had basically accepted it as a fact of life.

Of course this is all anecdotal, but maybe someone has similar issues.

Other things that helped me:
stretching - my hamstrings and calves are both really tight, which may contribute to my problems
popliteus-specific strengthening exercises - found these in a PT paper online
dry-point needling - only did this once though