I have currently got a ligament or tendon damage in my wrist which limits what I can lift on the upper body lifts. I am going to my first rehabilitation session in the next week I’m hoping it won’t take to much time to get it sorted out. For my workouts I am running stronglifts 5x5, however due to the wrist problem I have only been using the squats and deadlifts from the program. Before I came across the program I tried to deadlift 80 kilos but my wrist gave in. I found stronglifts and started to squat using 55 kilos and started my deadlift at 30 kilos (the lighter weight did not cause my wrist to ‘give in’).
I am now up to 100 kilos on the squat and 102kilos on the deadlift without wrist pain. I think as my technique has got better and my legs stronger the weight is not hanging from my wrists and I am using my legs and traps to lift the weight. Because of this I started the other exercises on 5x5 with just the empty bar with the theory that if the muscles get stronger my wrist wont be ‘taking the weight’. I don’t know if this is a good idea as I cant tell because I am only lifting 20 kilos on the other exercises so the weight is not high enough to put any significant strain on my wrist yet. If it does I will stop instead of making the injury worse. I am also doing loads of push ups and pull ups as this does not strain my wrist, I have got a dip belt to add extra weight and at the beginning of the month I started the 10 000 push ups in a month routine, I do them in sets of 20 and after the set of 20 push ups I do 10 pull ups.
So to summarise I am squatting 3 times a week adding 2.5kg each workout, deadlifting once or twice a week also adding 2.5kg each workout, I have just started to add in the other exercises on stronglifts and I am doing the push up and pull ups everyday, and may start to add weight with the dip belt. My question is, does this sound like a good sort of routine to be doing considering my injury, and also could I be doing something better than 5x5 squats for legs. I am looking for leg strength and hypertrophy, I have made good strentgh gains with the 5x5 method but maybe feel there is better way to induce leg strength and hypertrophy. Or should I carry on with the 5x5 method until I reach 130kg squat then move to the smolov for squats routine as suggested by the 5x5 program? I know the post is long but I want to be sure I am doing the right thing and not risking burn out? Any help advice would be greatly appreciated, Thanks.