Good day!
I’m a 41 yo male person, 6’0’ 188 lbs, approx. 22% body fat. I have a pretty good aerobic base. Basically your average joe. I’ve been doing a fair job with nutrition and conditioning (cycling and walking) and I’ve lost 50 lbs this year.
About 6 months ago I began SSLP with basically no weight training experience. After a few sessions I started having pain in my knees, between the kneecap and the joint, and at the top of the kneecap where it meets the quads. It wasn’t bad at first so I kept going, but it got worse, so I stopped. I’m pretty sure my squat form was a little off - I think I was holding myself too upright.
Over the last couple of months I also decided to try running again (I was a distance runner in high school and for a few years after). I was using Galloway’s run-walk-run method, thinking that starting slowly and easing in would be the way to go, but after a few weeks of very slow progression, the knee pain came back. So I stopped running, and took about 2 weeks off of any kind of knee loading. Knees felt better but not perfect.
A few days ago I decided to give SS another try. I’ve watched a ton of videos about squat form, and I’m pretty sure I’ve got it worked out. I started over at day 1 and built up from an empty bar to the point that the weight was slowing down my lift, as prescribed in the book. After the first session everything seemed fine. Knees were slightly sore but not painful. During the second session, everything seemed fine, until about 8 hours after, then the knee pain came back with a vengeance.
I’ve done quite a bit of reading over the last few months about overuse injuries, which is what I think I’ve got. I think that what I probably need to do now is rest my knees completely until they totally heal, which as I understand it could take several months. So no running, no squats, make my kids carry the laundry up from the basement. Then I can try again, starting with bodyweight squats and moving slowly up to goblet squats or something like that, very slowly increasing weight over a long enough time to give my knees time to adapt to the stress.
So my first question is, does that sound like a reasonable course of action, or is there something else you’d recommend for this kind of problem?
Second question is, should I go ahead and work the SSLP with the other lifts, omitting the squat, or would it be somehow detrimental to do only part of the program?
Thank you for your time!