2 nights ago I was doing workout 1 of week 3 of the GPP Hypertrophy program. I was running late so I shortened my squat warmup sets by making larger jumps in weight. On the first working set @6, my right knee felt ‘funny’ at the bottom on rep 1 with a subtle squishing feeling like I had a ball behind my knee stretching the femur away from the lower leg bones. By my first @8 set, it hurt enough that I re-racked the weight after 2 reps. Maybe a 4/10 on the pain scale? Enough that I felt it unwise to continue without changes. Before BBM, I would catastrophized the situation and taken a week or two off, but I think I know better now.
It only hurt at the bottom, so I experimented to see how far down I could go without pain, and reset the pins there. That’s about 3" higher than proper BBM depth. I also took 15% off the bar to keep RPE @8 for that knee/leg and continued through the next two sets with only very mild discomfort at the bottom. It hurts randomly through the day if I twist on that foot, but it’s fairly easy to avoid that motion.
Did I capture the right changes to my training? I plan to keep training at that reduced range of motion, listening to that knee and adjusting weights accordingly. Then, also occasional checks to a lower depth to see if there is still pain there. If good, then increase depth and adjust weights per RPE. If anything deteriorates, I’ll seek outside help. Sound good?
My last session involved squat myoreps; a test of one’s motivation! I approached depth cautiously during warmups, everything felt ok. I was able to reach full depth even at full weight for 15, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5 reps. My legs/hips/back were more stressed than my knee was, which is what I was hoping for! The knee still has slight twinges of discomfort while twisting in daily life, but pain-free squat myoreps bodes well for the future.
Back to higher weights/lower reps on Tuesday for the real test…