Topic: Knee Pain

[Jim Hooper]

Andy, glad to hear it is getting better. 

I wonder - does your knee feel the same (hurt the same way) when you operate that joint in something other than a back squat - does it feel the same as it does in a squat when you perform a leg extension, leg press, front squat, lunge, etc? 

If it does feel the same in all those exercises (independently of the specific stresses put on it in the back squat), that would suggest to me that its not something in your squat form that is the root cause, but rather than you've got injured tissue that has to heal or be repaired.  I don't see anything in your technique at this point that I've ever seen cause anyone else any knee trouble.  (And maybe that's why its getting better.)

On the other hand, if it feels fine EXCEPT when you squat, then that would suggest to me that the tissue is okay - in that nothing else seems to bother it - and that trying to resolve it with alterations to your squat technique or mechanics (e.g., shoes, especially heel height) might be the more direct approach.

Hats off to you for working through this the way you have.  Many would have long ago just quit squatting and resigned themselves to a life with old-lady legs.

[D. Mahnke]

Hi Andy. I'm Doug, and new to the forum.  In the past i had patellar tendinitis along with femoral patellar tendinitis, which was particularly nasty.  I let it get pretty bad, mostly the result of training through pain instead of focusing on full recovery.  I would say it took a full 2 years to completely recover, to which the actual recovery was done through no single solution.  Important points that did help were making sure i was not tight anywhere through hips, ankles or legs.  I found that when one area is tight, the stress is picked up somewhere else, which is often the knees.  I did a lot of mobility and stretching work on my glutes, piriformis, quads and extensors, hamstrings, IT bands and calves.  During this time i did very little squatting, but did do plenty of hamstring work( oly lifter has ever been too strong in the hamstrings). Out of all the quad centered exercises, i found the simple old quad extension the most helpful, with super light weight and high repetition.  Believe me when i say i tried everything.  Complete recovery was ridiculously long, but was made more so by my competing and training.   I'm plenty older than you (47), so i would imagine you could recover much faster. 
at the very least i do know the frustration of knee problems, so you have my sympathy! 
now shoulder problems..... ah, i shouldnt get myself started.
 

[Andy Dick]

Jim when it first started bothering me it never really bothered me in any of the lifts just afterward after cooling down and especially going up stairs.  I think eventually it hurt during everything.  After taking the time off it bothered me more in the squats (but usually squats came after olympic lifts so it is hard to say was it just starting to act up because of squats or finally after about an 45-60 min of pounding with the lifts did it start to get sore.  It gets hard to say again because when I started back in lifting it was only squatting and it did give me a little trouble in squatting but that was all I was doing but it was getting better.  Since I have started olympic lifting again it has not bothered me at all in any lift (olympic or squat).  I have also been slowly increasing my weights I have been 2 days of lighter intensity 80% or so and 2 days working heavier (nothing crazy since I don't want to over do it).  Today it has felt much better.  I went up to 90kg on clean and jerk and squatted 300#x2 315x2.  No problems at all during the workouts.  When I am standing and walking around a lot (as part of my job) I notice it sometimes alternates feeling tight in the quad medially above the knee or laterall below the knee (this troubles me).  It never feels tight in both places at once and after walking around it will pop (feels like when you pop your knuckles) then feels fine for a while.  The good sign though is even this has been becoming less frequent and less severe.  I realize the best thing would be to get an MRI but I have no insurance so that is out right now.

I have been spending a lot of time taking care of myself in the whole process.  I have been making sure I am getting plenty of sleep (more than in the past and on a more reqular basis).  I always heat before doing any legs and will ride the bike quickly at a moderate intensity for 2 minutes to get warm.  Afterwards I will do an extensive foam roll on my calves, hammies, back, butt, quads (lot of time spent here), It band, adductor, hip flexor.  Then I will begin warming up with my first exercise.  Post workout I have an extensive stretching routine I follow hitting the same spots as well, I also do shoulder dislocates at the end for upper body and any other upper body stretch if a part is tight.  If I am not able to fit it in post workout I am very sure to go over all the stretching later when at home.  My routine consists of static stretching of 5 sets of 20-30 seconds on each body part.  I will also sit in a full squat for the same sets of the stretch which I have felt really has belped my flexibility with the lifts as well as comfort sitting down in the full squat.

Also when I get a few weeks done I am going to paste my workout that I have been doing since I was cleared for olympic lifting again as well.  If that will help some people.

[Jim Hooper]

Sounds like you're almost home and old-lady legs will not be part of your future.  Great!  Just keep being patient, and don't reinjure it with any irrational exhuberance.

[Andy Dick]

My knee felt good today, probably the best it has in a while.  I had a very good lift day as well.  I am steadily coming back.  Below I am posting what I am doing for these four weeks.  I am on week four right now.  I included my misses and notes so my weight choices for each week make sense.  All olympic lifts and assistance exercises are written in kilograms, squats and supplemental lifting are in lbs.  I am now about 15 kgs off of my best on each lift which is very encouraging.  I am aiming to be at least back to what I was doing pre-injury or better for a local meet on April 2nd.  If I am not back to there I may pass on the meet since I don't feel the need to invest the money in a meet if I am not doing equal or better than what I was doing.  I am trying to set up to progam so I have an off day before each heavy day of the competition lifts.  Then I follow with light days (about 80%).  This has been working well for me, by wednesday the snatches were feeling challenging and my legs were pretty tired on Thursday.  However, by Saturday they felt 100% and as you can see I had a great lift day as well.

WEEK 1 (1/17/11) ---------------------------------------------------------------------

WORKOUT #1 (LGT)
Snatch (57.5x3 60x3 62.5x3) 2 Segments
Back Squats (2x2) 275, 295
RDL (3x5) 185, 185, 205
Core

WORKOUT #2
Split Jerk (70x2 75x2 80x2)
SA Bench (3x5) 55, 60, 65
BB Row (3x5) 135, 145, 155
Core

WORKOUT #3 (HVY)
Snatch (57.5x2 62.5x2 67.5x2) 2 Segments
Back Squats (2x2) 295, 305
RDL (3x5) 185, 205, 215
Core

WORKOUT #4 (HVY)
C&J (72.5x1 77.5x1 82.5x1) 2 Segments / 75, 80, 85 segment 2
Front Squats (2x2) 275, 285
RDL (3x5) 195, 205, 215

WEEK 2 (1/24/11) ---------------------------------------------------------------------

WORKOUT #1 (LGT)
Clean (70x3 75x3 80x3) 2 Segments
Back Squats (2x2) 285, 295
RDL (3x5) 185, 195, 205
Core

WORKOUT #2 (LGT)
Split Jerk (70x2 75x2 80x2) 2 Segments
SA Bench (3x5) 60, 65, 70
BB Row (3x5) 140, 150, 160
Core

WORKOUT #3 (HVY)
C&J (77.5x1 82.5x1 87.5x1) 2 Segments / 80, 85, 90 Segment 2
Back Squats (2x2) 300, 315
RDL (3x5) 195, 205, 220
Core

WORKOUT #4 (HVY)
Snatch (60x2 65x2 70x2) 2 Segments / 62.5, 67.5, 72.5 Segment 2
Front Squats (2x2) 275, 290x2-1
RDL (3x5) 200, 210, 220

WEEK 3 (1/31/11) ---------------------------------------------------------------------

WORKOUT #1 (HVY)
Snatch (62.5x2 67.5x2 72.5x2) 2 Segments / 65, 70, 75x2-1 Segment 2
Back Squats (2x2) 305, 320x2-2
RDL (3x5) 205, 215, 225

WORKOUT #2 (LGT)
Clean (70x3 75x3 80x3) 2 Segments
Clean Pulls (3x3) 90 kgs
Core

WORKOUT #3 (LGT)
Snatch (50x3 55x3 60x3) 2 Segments / 60x3-1 Segment 1
Back Squats (2x2) 275, 275
RDL (3x5) 185, 195, 205
Core

WORKOUT #4 (HVY)
Split Jerk (85x1 90x1 95x1) 2 segments
SA Bench (3x5) 65, 70, 75
BB Row (3x5) 145, 155, 160
Core

WORKOUT #5 (HVY)
C&J (82.5x1 87.5x 1 92.5x1) 2 Segments / 85, 90, 95, 100 Segment 2
Front Squats (2x2) 275, 290, 290x2-1
RDL (3x5) 205, 215, 225

WEEK 4 (2/7/11) ---------------------------------------------------------------------

WORKOUT #1 (HVY)
C&J (90x1 95x1 100x1) 2 Segments
Back Squats (2x2) 305, 320
RDL (3x5) 215, 225, 225

WORKOUT #2 (LGT)
Snatch (50x3 55x3 60x3) 2 Segments
Snatch Pulls (3x3) 75 kgs
Core

WORKOUT #3 (LGT)
Clean (70x3 75x3 80x3) 2 Segments
Back Squats (2x2) 275, 275
RDL (3x5) 185, 195, 205
Core

WORKOUT #4 (HVY)
Split Jerk (90x1 95x1 100x1) 2 Segments
SA Bench (3x5)
BB Row (3x5)
Core

WORKOUT #5 (HVY)
Snatch (65x2 70x2 75x2) 2 Segments
Front Squats (2x2) 280, 295
RDL (3x5)

[Andy Dick]

BAD NEWS:

I on week 4 my knee was starting to act up again.  I decided to take this week easy for the most part, I squatted heavy 4 sets of back squat 4 sets of front squat.  I tried to do light lifts for they olympic lifts Tuesday but I was just so tired 50kg was hard (getting misses on that weight felt really heavy) so I just took the day off.  I maxed on snatch and clean and jerk today.  During clean and jerk my knee started bothering me again.  I talked to the trainer and he said don't stop lifting but don't exceed 75% of my maxes on any lift.  This royally sucks and is really wearing on my patience.

[Andy Dick]

I talked to the trainer some about my knee because it is still not fully recovered.  I am only squatting 2 times a week just focusing on strengthening.  It slowely seems to be getting better.  After the talk with the trainer on how recovery has been and when it gets sore and such said he feels I may have a slight avulsion of the patellar tendon that was brought about by pushing through the patellar tendonitis for so long.  I am looking at 1 or 2 more weeks of just squatting then start working olympic lifts back in.  It will basically be an as tolerated sort of thing with light intensity for the beginning.  I am really hoping that over time I can get back to 100% this is very hard to stay patient.

[Andy Dick]

Another chapter in my knee garbage.  Today I started olympic lifting again.  I kept the intensity lighter to do a lighter week working back into lifting.  My program consisted of the following.  The intensity is about 78% of what my highest lift was before I dropped the lifts out just to squat.

Cleans 70x2 75x2 75x2 80x2 80x2 80x2
Snatch Pull (3x3) 60 kgs
Back Squat (2x2) 295#

All of the attempts were easy.  The back squat was a little harder but was significantly easier than what I was doing (last week I did 295# for 5x6).  The knee didn't really feel all bad, it stated feeling sore during squats.  Now it seems like I may have a little bit of swelling, not a lot.  I am going to see the trainer tomorrow again and see what he says.