Patella tendon hurts during warm-ups

[rho]

Hello there,
My patella tendon (left knee) hurts when I squat. When I wear sleeves it only hurts during warm-ups. When I get to the working weights it has stopped hurting or the pain has decreased so much I only notice it when I pay attention to it. Without sleeves it hurts all the time, but much less when I'm warmed up.
This has been going on for months now. I can't find a fix for this. I've tried lowering the total volume/week, lowering the weight for the top sets (more reps/set), lowering the reps/set (bit higher intensity).
Could doing less volume/training be a good option? I can shuffle my sets a bit around over my training days so the total weekly volume stays about the same. (now I have 1 high volume day and 1 lower volume day)
What about keeping the reps/set low, intensity the same, but more sets? (to keep the training-volume about equal)
Thanks for your help!

[Jordan Feigenbaum]

I probably wouldn't do anything about it except for consciously try and think about it less (which you pointed out yourself). Additionally, I don't know anything about your program so I'm not sure if I can comment about your programming management.

[rho]

OK, I'll try not to worry about it.
I have no knee-pain during DL. I feel it mostly coming out of the hole with squats. But it's also annoying when I walk down the stairs. So it would be nice if I could get rid of it.

I do my programming myself, but it's roughly based on the principles you advocate on this site. For the main lift I go up to a heavy single (@8) and do some back-off sets. (~4 sets, RPE 7 - 8, 3 - 5 reps)
I squat 2/week. 1x as a main lift and 1x with less volume (3sets, no single).
My DL is programmed about the same way.

[Blargleman]

Sounds like you have the same "old man knees" I have (except that I have it in both patella tendons). Taken together with left elbow and both shoulders suggest I might be pushing a bit hard! Like you though, once warmed up, I dont notice any of it for the working sets.

How long have you been formally training vs. "exercising" at the gym? I'm only a couple of months in, but have a long history of "on again, off again" working out at the gym. I wonder if this allows for catching up on some of the earlier muscular adaptation (newbie+ "GainzZz") to skip ahead of the tendon adaptation by a significant margin, particularly having always worked in the 12ish rep range, meaning limited previous tendon adaptation. I figure that the tendons will catch up at some point, based upon BBM advice and the link they provided elsewhere in these forums (see: https://www.strongerbyscience.com/sq...-tendinopathy/)

Cheers,
Glen