Injured my knee over a year ago (probably MCL injury) and haven’t done any significant squatting since. And cautious about squatting until I’ve gone pain-free for a long enough period of time (added a thread to the injury forum to ask about knee rehab template).
I’m 55 yrs, 115kg (down from 130kg last year), and was up to 200KG DL, 115kg Bench, 175kg squat, last year at my heavier weight.
Since the knee problem I focussed more on back / upper body. Was ok to continue with DLs, and could use the leg press instead of squats (plus ham curls / leg extension machines). But DL lift went down considerably. And without the squat my enjoyment of workouts / discipline kinda slipped.
Covid closed the gym this year and I’ve been doing body weight exercise at home – nothing worth talking about.
So, the gyms seem to be opening here, now (over in Greece, Europe). And I was thinking I NEED to get back on the program. ANY program! Found your templates and thought it might be nice to try something new. Especially having lost approx 15kg and not wanting to put it back on again.
I started out with strength training / powerlifting training approx 7 or 8 years ago with the Starting Strength book. Although that 3 days a week of 3x5 squats/benches/DLs/etc gets boring and drove me to an ‘overtrained’ condition every time I reverted back to it. Made all my best progress on a 3 week cycle of a 5/3/1 variation using 8/5/3 regularly switching exercises, and adding in drop sets / rest pauses etc
I should probably just go back to what worked before but was curious to try something new, just to get back into the routine of hitting the gym x times per week.
Is there a template you would recommend for me?
Something strength / powerlifting focussed would make sense. (That isn’t totally built around squats!)