I’m a novice powerlifter (have been at it since April and my age is 33) and lately, I’ve been feeling intense pain in my quad tendons while squatting - the deeper I go the worse it gets. It isn’t yet debilitating to my workout, as it seems to subside when I’m warmed up, but it’s bad outside the gym.
My coach says that I should try to reduce the weights and work through it, but after doing some research online I don’t think it’s a very good idea, because I feel pain even if I squat with an empty bar or no bar at all.
So I thought I’d rather limit the ROM and do pin squats using the pain-free ROM and then gradually increase the ROM as my tendons heal and adapt.
I’m not sure about the frequency, though. Ever since I started, I’ve been squatting 3 times a week. Do you think I should do pin squats 3 times as well?
I thought I’d keep this thread updated with my rehabilitation process as it might come useful to other people battling quadriceps tendinopathy.
It turned out that my gym doesn’t have the necessary equipment for pin squats (no power rack or spotter arms), so I decided to settle for box squats as I saw it recommended in a number of places.*
So I’ve been box squatting for 2 weeks now - twice a week 4x6 @~70%RM, and it’s being super beneficial. Not only is the tendon pain subsiding, but it also made me realize that I probably need to alter my regular squat form in order to prevent knee pain in the future. Thanks to box squats, I think I found a squat form that fits my physique better (long femurs) and puts less stress on the quad tendons - hips further back, wider stance, knees more out, bent over more than before.
Also, box squats are a lot tougher than I expected! I’ll definitely keep them as part of my regular routine after the rehabilitation process.
Glad to hear things are progressing well. I do want to caution attempting to over-analyze your symptom presentation based on biomechanical rationale. Tendinopathies becoming symptomatic seem well correlated to loading and lack of adaptation rather than a specific way of squatting or “stressing the quad tendons”. Also - preventing pain would be a poor position to operate from as it is a part of life but rather having behaviors in place to deal with it would be a better course of action. Happy to discuss and again glad to hear it sounds like you are progressing well.
Stilll doing box squats twice a week. I still like them a lot. Meanwhile, the relatively pain-free ROM has increased to the degree that I started doing regular low-bar squats once a week with some light intensity. Hope I’m not jumping the gun. It’s a bummer that tendons take so long to heal and adapt.
Edit: Oh and I got a pair of snug knee sleeves as well. I’m surprised at how much support they provide.
The pain has further decreased. There’s still the occasional flare-up, but it’s a lot more tolerable than before. I’m about to start doing regular low-bar squats twice a week and box squats once. I’m so looking forward to getting back to full-on squatting.
I had a minor setback. I got a little impatient and started training harder than I should have - the pain had been constantly decreasing and I thought I was ready but apparently not, and the pain flared up again. Since then I managed to reset the volume to a level where the pain is decreasing again from week to week. Low bar squatting twice a week and doing wall sits with extra weight once. I’ll be more patient this time and stick to squatting twice a week while slowly increasing the volume.
I just came back to say that quad tendinopathy is fully gone now and I can squat completely pain-free. Not sure what helped eventually, but it feels great to be back. Consistency and persistence are probably part of it, and also not being discouraged by the eventual fallbacks.