I've had soreness around my knees for over a month now, which has completely wiped out squatting from my weightlifting regimen. Basically only been working calves for any leg exercises.Do you guys think I could maybe get away with some light leg curls or leg extensions? Would leg pressing be too risky for now?I didn't experience any level of pain like this until after I was squatting with picrel. Could these platform shoes have been the culprit? My squats immediately improved once I used the shoes but now I'm concerned maybe it was too much height and they eventually caused the injury?>For context:>I can bend my leg back with zero pain. >But bending down (like in a squatting motion) really hurts right above my knee>I guess this is like the distal femur (?) region? >I don't think my knees themselves are injured, maybe just the tendons? Do any fitanons know what could be the problem? Should I get an X-ray? I was finally making heavy gains on my squat and this happened... Really bummed out. Any help would be appreciated.
>>75139121Forgot to add:Could this be tendonitis?
>>75139121Defo tendonitis, had the exact same thing when halfway through my Smolov Jr for squats.You probably weren't properly engaging your quads before using lifting shoes, which finally allowed you to go full rom and recruit more quads. The downside is, while your muscle might have been fit enough and is able to recover, your tendons take much longer to adapt and going full rom challenges them. You went too hard and need to take off some load. Take some days off and then reintroduce squats with lower load, to where you feel some discomfort but aren't in massive pain in the area above the knees. Ideally use knee sleeves. You need to strengthen your tendons and you will only achieve this by doing the movements that injured it in the first place.
>>75139121After I severely fucked my left knee a few years ago it took over a year to heal. I now wear knee sleeves for any squatting, even warmups as a >year with fucked knees is far worse than less than optimum training.
Do some leg curls and leg extensions with light weights. It will help your tendon heal.
>>75139421>It will help your tendon heal.So that would actually help it? I was under the impression that—assuming it actually is tendonitis—the best medicine is to just let it completely heal, and that any movement would just prevent any healing and potentially exacerbate it.
>>75139233>Ideally use knee sleevesSo you'd recommend these over, say, those knee straps?>You need to strengthen your tendons and you will only achieve this by doing the movements that injured it in the first place.So are you saying to try with very light weight, even if they are not 100% pain-free yet?
>>75139808>>75139233>You probably weren't properly engaging your quads before using lifting shoes, which finally allowed you to go full rom and recruit more quads. The downside is, while your muscle might have been fit enough and is able to recover, your tendons take much longer to adapt and going full rom challenges them. And forgot to add that this makes a lot of sense. Thank you for the explanation. I think you're absolutely right.
>>75139778Tendons have very low blood flow going to them, and doing light weight exercises will help with that. You can read a bit more about it here:>https://stevenlow.org/overcoming-tendonitis/
>>75139832That's good to know then. Waiting doesn't seem to be working at all anyway. Thank you, anon. I'll check that out.
>>75139808 If by knee straps you mean knee wraps, they might be even better as your may be able to get them tighter around the important parts. I personally only have experience with sleeves and they were the main thing that helped me continue to squat with minimal pain and throughout the recovery period.The second thing that helped a lot was good warm ups. You might find that the pain is the worst during "rest" aka normal day-to-day activities, but after some low load exercise the pain lessens or goes away. As another anon mentioned, increased blood flow may help to recover faster. What I've heard with tendon rehab, the load should be enough that it feels uncomfortable but the pain does not worsen. You are trying to strengthen your tendons without further damaging them, so you should not go too easy as it won't lead to adaptation, but also not heavy enough as to injure yourself further. It's not very helpful, but you really should just feel it out for yourself.
>>75139955Thank you. I'll try doing that. Seems like getting blood flow is the best course of action to be taking here. I'll be doing light exercises. I think I'll try to warm up very well with some light weight on the leg extension like the other anon recommended, and then move over to the squat to do a light load.
