Knee Injury - Recovery Pace

Pain & Rehab Forum [Moderated]
1

Hey guys,

I have a question in relation to the rate of progress I should use in returning from a training injury to my left knee.

I originally injured it in August 2019, a time when I was squatting 3 days per week following your Strength III template. One day I woke up and it was very sore to squat down to any depth. I was able to progress from not being able to bodyweight squat to regular training loads in about 2 weeks, with the use of load reduction and tempo leg press. I then returned to regular strength programming.

More recently, in January, the same injury returned. I re-read your “Pain in training: what do?” article and set to work; finding an entry point, managing my expectations, taking sensible loads and staying positive. Due to my country’s lockdown I didn’t have access to my gym so I was limited to just barbell lifts. I chose to do a low bar squat Monday and a high bar squat on Thursdays. For context, I am a 230kg/507lb squatter. The progression went as follows:

Week 1
Day 1: Low Bar 303: 4x12, top set 20kg x12 @3, 0/10 pain
Day 2: High Bar 303: 4x12, top set 50kg x12 @4, 1/10 pain

Week 2
Day 1: Low Bar 303: 4x12, top set 75kg x12 @7, 0/10 pain
Day 2: High Bar 303: 4x12, top set 90kg x12 @8, 0/10 pain

Week 3
Day 1: Low Bar 303: 4x12, top set 92.5kg x12 @7, 0/10 pain
Day 2: High Bar 303: 4x12, top set 95kg x12 @8, 0/10 pain

Week 4
Day 1: Low Bar 303: 4x10, top set 100kg x10 @9, 0/10 pain
Day 2: High Bar 303: 4x10, top set 100kg x10 @8, 0/10 pain

Week 5
Day 1: Low Bar 303: 4x10, top set 110kg x10 @8, 0/10 pain
Day 2: High Bar 303: 4x10, top set 107.5kg x10 @8.5, 0/10 pain

Week 6
Day 1: Low Bar 303: 4x8, top set 120kg x8 @8.5, 0/10 pain
Day 2: High Bar 303: 4x8, top set 117.5kg x10 @8, 0/10 pain

Week 7
Day 1: Low Bar 303: 5x6, top set 132.5kg x6 @8, 0/10 pain
Day 2: High Bar 303: 5x6, top set 130kg x6@8, 0/10 pain

My question is: what protocol/loading should I use to get back to competition squatting? I haven’t experienced pain while squatting in almost 2 months, should I return to normal or just take it very slowly and work my way up, 5kg at a time? Any specific reccomendations you could provide would be really helpful. I wanted to take things slowly in working back up as I was afraid of re-injury, however I feel I may be progressing too slow.

Any guidance you could provide would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time.

2

Hey Jimbo9000 - good work on embracing the process while managing through your knee pain experience. We would ultimately need a consultation with you to effectively weigh-in on your situation. With that said, the likely next step is speeding up reps. My general approach in this context is going from 3.0.3 to 2.0.2, then normal pace. I tend to only change a single variable at a time generally speaking so if I’m speeding up tempo then I typically am not also dropping repetitions or upping RPE.