Knee pain during the knee rehab template

Training Q&A [Moderated]
1

Hey BBM,

To give a short background - I was dealing with a hip injury for quite a while which prevented me from squatting heavy, and only in recent months i’ve been able to start making some progress there. I slowly added weight starting from 60 kg and adding 2.5 kg every week and managed to get up to 125 kg for 4 reps @ RPE 7 when I was running PB III a couple of months ago. In the last few weeks before I got up to 125 kg for 4, I started feeling increasing knee pain which got to a point that going up stairs, kneeling down on one knee, and even just slightly brushing the bar on my knees on the way up from a deadlift was very painful (I’ll note that i’ve always been dealing with knee pain to some degree since long before I was weight training, though it was always manageable).

After I got to that point where everything was very painful, I ended up taking around 2 weeks off of any form of squatting / leg press and the pain mostly went away (The break was also due to other life circumstances as I was not able to invest as much time into training during that period). Since then, i’ve been running the knee rehab template, which I started at the second block. I’m currently on week 6, and up until now the knees have been feeling okay, though not great (meaning there’s been slight discomfort while squatting but nothing too serious or to the point that it affects me during my day-to-day life. Though, I have been feeling the knee pain slightly increasing as i’ve been moving up in weight according to the template (this week i’ve squatted 115 kg for 6 reps @ RPE 8 as the program called for).

So, although the knee pain is still manageable at this point, it is increasing, and my worry is that the knee pain will keep increasing to the point that i’m back where I was before starting the knee rehab template.

What should be my next step in dealing with this? Should I go back to the beginning of the knee rehab template and this time run also the first block, or should I keep going with the template as written?

Thanks in advance.

2

Hey Josh,

Sorry to hear about the knee pain. I think you’ve returned to quickly to normal rep ranges and load for your current situation. If managing on your own, I would recommend going to phase I and making sure you do the direct “knee” work. If there are other symptoms, there’s a more complicated history, or that doesn’t produce suitable results, I think some 1 on 1 advice may be useful.

3

Hey Jordan, thanks for the reply.

If I try and manage this injury on my own, after going back to phase I of the knee rehab template, would you recommend running the rest of the template as written, or should I be working at a slightly higher rep range with a lower RPE for a bit longer than the template calls for?

4

I don’t see a reason to modify the approach based on what you’ve reported here, though you could add reps and reduce RPE further if you prefer. I would still make sure there’s a bridge back to normal training at the end to avoid rapidly increasing training load.