I’m a male 3rd year undergrad, and I’ve been lifting weights for five years (I’m 21). I am 240lbs, on my way to 205 per waistline guidelines. I have been experiencing this knee pain for two years, and I’ve always tried to just train through it or avoid aggravating it with heavier squats. I don’t own knee sleeves and can’t afford them. I do own squat shoes as a gift from someone. A few months into my first semester at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, I could hardly walk from the knee pain I was experiencing. The inflammation has never died down despite 3 shots directly into my knee to stop it. The pain is primarily in my right knee. Previous MRIs described calcification and excessive bursal fluid around both kneecaps, and neither is “attached how it should be.” They’re “free floating and don’t lock when you flex your quads,” as doctors have told me. I’ve done an accumulative year of rehab throughout my life, but I don’t have any insurance anymore to see a specialist. My knees crunch throughout any motion, and they make an uncomfortable pop when I fully contract my quads and lock my knee caps. Pause and tempo squats ignite some tendon or ligament behind my knee, on the back of my leg, and it feels like it is going to snap. Currently, just walking hurts. I have high quality shoes for walking around. Some mornings I have to wait before I can physically get out of bed, because my knee is locked up and won’t let me move. Barbell squats are becoming increasingly painful (even just the bar), bodyweight squats are painful, lunges are painful, etc. Any movement of my knees is painful, and finishing my deadlifst is painful. Setting my legs for the bench press is painful. Yada yada yada, pain all the time. I can’t afford the rehab template, and I’m suffering. I want to continue training and be jacked and all that good stuff, but I’ve been stuck with this knee pain for years. I’m on a prescription for 1000mg of nabumetone from a previous injury, and I was told to continue taking it for my knees until the inflammation goes away. It isn’t going away, and it’s been too long. I’ve tried it all via the University trying to help me- braces, cupping, massage, foam rolling, the aforementioned injections, stretching, physical therapy, etc. I just want to be better. Sorry for the long, sad post, and thank you for the great programming.
Hey buddy, sorry to hear about your knee situation and the time that you have been dealing with it. Before we get into the nuts and bolts of what our recommendations would be, could you give us a little more background on your training history and the current paradigms you are following. It certainly sounds like you have been told some stuff that is likely not ideal. Your kneecaps should be “freefloating” as that is part of the definition of a sesamoid bone and what actually allows your knee joint to work like it should. Without seeing your MRI reports it would be difficult to discern what is meant by your kneecaps “not being attached as it should be” but barring some time of ligamentous tear, this is likely not the case.
Most of the time in instances such as this it is about determining where to start as what the grand plan needs to be. If you can provide us with some more information on your current training regimen and history we can likely start to point you in the right direction.
I started training in May of 2014 - I started with typical bro-stuff until I was in my Freshman year of university - a good two-ish years into my lifting experience. I stumbled across the Texas Method while recovering from breaking my L5 vertabrae in February of 2016 (divebombing a bro-style high-bar squat), and from then on I discovered SS and its affiliates. Then I stumbled across Dr. Baraki’s pain podcast, then Alan Thrall talked about BBM, and I’ve run nothing but BBM programming since: The Bridge 1.0, 2.0, GPP template, and now Alan Thrall’s 16 week free template from a video of his.
My knee pain started while walking through my campus one day, and I was told that my background in West Tennessee didn’t translate well into walking around hills, endless staircases, and the long distances of campus life.