Training with knee pain

Training Q&A [Moderated]
1

I needed to stop 2 squat sessions this week (second week of The Bridge) because of a sharp, stabbing knee pain.

The history is as follows:

  • it started a couple of months ago on a novice LP - after resetting 90kg fail to 80kg and quickly progressing up to 105x5x3, I never experienced any knee pain in the gym, but ocassionally a sharp pain would appear at random times of the day and go away after a couple of minutes.
  • after failing 107kg, I reset the weight and the pain was gone for a week or two, then started appearing again around 105kg squats. This time I failed 115kg and moved onto The Bridge.
  • on the paused squats on wednesday of the second week of the program, the same kind of pain appeared during my warmups. I tried doing some air squats and working back up, but even with 60kg the pain appeared again so i stopped with the squats
  • today the same happened with the tempo squats

Knee observations:

  • pain never lingers on for more than a couple of minutes
  • knees usually feel stiff; when I’m sitting, I often straighten my legs and crack them to relieve the tension
  • pain often appears when walking downhill or down the stairs

I do all squats highbar and all deadlifts sumo, which puts more emphasis on the quads than lowbar squats and conventional pulls - is it likely that I’ve developed a muscle imbalance that contributes to the pain?

I listened to your podcasts about pain and it helped me train up to this point without panic (used to be really paranoid), but now I’m not sure how to continue training. My plan would be to switch to wide stance box squats with vertical shins until the end of The Bridge, but I thought you guys might have some better suggestions.

2

It’s unlikely that whatever you’re experiencing is from a “muscle imbalance”. With that said, it’s still difficult for us to say exactly what is going on.

If you have found a style of squat that your knees tolerate better (e.g., the box squats you mention, or trying something like pin squats, low bar squats, etc), I’d definitely give that a shot, starting conservatively and and progressing up more gradually than you’d like.

3

I’ll do that, thanks a lot Austin :slight_smile: