Quad Tear and LLD

Hi guys,
Thanks for what you do here. 2 questions, one post.

First, I tore my quad about a year ago while squatting. It was a muscle belly tear and it’s taken this long to fully rehab. I am fairly confident that it is good to go and have had zero discomfort/wonkiness in about 2-3 months. That being said, I have lost 60-70 pounds on my squat over the year (my 1 rep max is where my 5’s were when I tore it). My intention at this point it to just try to add 5 pounds every week to my e1RM and program based on that and try to scratch my way back up.
So this week, my @8’s were based on 455, next week, I would try to hit my RPE numbers based on 460.
Is this a good approach?

2nd question. Through all of this rehabbing and lots and lots of squatting, I’ve figured out that I have about a ½” leg length discrepancy. My left femur (which is the quad I tore) is shorter than my right. Basically, if I’m hitting depth on my right side, my left hip is just at parallel.

Should I be concerned about this going forward and do you think this had any contribution to the injury?

Thanks again for all the info and guidance you all provide.

You haven’t really told us how you decided your e1RM was 455? Did you do some sort of a linear progression when rehabbing?

And unfortunately I don’t really have a good way of knowing whether your LLD is significant or whether it had anything to do with your injury. I suspect it did not.

Sorry, I was trying to be brief and was too brief.

I ran a very long and arduous rehab protocol and had to re-set several times based on how the quad felt at a given weight. It was sets of 25, sets of 20, then sets of 15, sets of 10, then sets of 8, and finally sets of 6. I also did some 5-3-0 tempo squats at 55% of whatever my work sets were. I ended my 6’s at: 420x6@9, 400x6@9, 380x6@8.5, 360x6@8. While the quad was feeling good at this point, I was beat. I also was concerned about the next 40-50 pounds as I was entering the intensity range where the tear occurred, so I put the breaks on progression to cycle intensity slowly up.

The last 18 weeks or so of my rehab, I ran some sub-maximal sets of 5’s, heavyish doubles across, and then triples for sets across of the same weight. 9 week cycles of 5’s, 2’s then 3’s. On the 5’s week, I worked up to a heavy single @8 before the sets of 5. The last single I worked up to was 455, based on how things had been feeling I expected it to be an 8, but it was a 10. But everything felt good from an injury standpoint–nothing was off and things felt right. I finished that small cycle with triples at 430 that felt like 10’s. I lost strength over the 18 weeks because I am sure volume was not high enough, but I needed to be sure as I worked my way through the 420-460-ish range everything kept feeling good.

That all being said, based on the triples (430x3@10), my e1rm is 466, based on that heavy single (455x1@10) it is 455.

I am now running the first week of the competitive monthly group programming (I’m a week behind due to when the programming went out and my training schedule). Squats went like this: 365x5@7.5 (overshot RPE target of 7), 370x5@8, 380x5@9. Puts my e1rm at 454.

I believe I have some very good data points for my squats, now it is just about making sure I start progressing properly.

For what it’s worth, deads took a hit as well. But have come back faster as I have been able to train them without as much impact on the quad. Pre-tear I pulled 625@9. About 3 weeks ago, I pulled 635x1@9. So I’m back on track there.

Thanks Austin. I appreciate it.

That makes a lot more sense.

And yes, I think your approach is reasonable - I would have probably done something similarly for rehab, though maybe shying away from @9s or higher for a bit longer.

Happy to have you in the group programming!

Thanks Austin!

Yeah, I was a little shocked out how much weaker I became those last 18 weeks. I shouldn’t have been so stubborn on the set weights and in hindsight, I know I dropped too much volume.

Clearly, we will be making up for that going forward.