Organizing Training to Accommodate for Knee Issues?

Training
1

I have pain in my right knee and tightness behind my left knee when I do relatively heavy (for me) squats (>100 lbs) or lunges. I don’t have any problems with deadlifts or other hinge motions and have no problems doing bodyweight squats or lunges that are not hard sets to or close to failure (e.g. squatting down to pick something up).

Thus far this year I’ve been organizing my training into 3 workouts days (press + assistance, bench + assistance, deadlift + assistance), with assistance mainly being incline dumbbell press, side lateral raise, dumbbell row, cable row, bicep curls, triceps pushdown, leg curls and Bulgarian split squat (moderate weight). Total conditioning is lackluster (average 1.9 miles run per week and average 30 minutes total conditioning per week).

Would it be beneficial for knee recovery to add a dedicated leg day or keep the current set up? I would start with moderately weighted front squats (barbell or kettlebell) followed by single leg exercises, kb swings or back extensions, and leg curls or extensions.

2

Does this include heavy leg presses too?

3

I don’t do leg press, but I’m not opposed to including them.

4

When I hurt my back and could not do squats, I loaded up the leg press (always doing at least 10 reps). I was able to build fairly good thighs without squats (and at that time I never did lunges.)

See if you can do them pain free.

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5

I’ll try it. I recently got knee sleeves and that seems to help a fair amount.

6

I second the leg press suggestion. I no longer squat due to knee issues but for whatever reason I can leg press with very little to no pain. I also like higher rep sets. I usually do sets of 15-20 with a relatively slow cadence.

I’d also try out Bulgarian split squats. These too seem easier on my knees than barbell squats.

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7

Well probably there is not an answer valid for everybody. I suffer from knee pain, especially when I try to add running in my schedule.
What works for me is adding regular calf work (weak calves put a lot of stress on the knee), both strength and stretching daily, and abduction/addiction 2/3 times a week and glute work in general.

I don’t have knee pain when I squat (or very mild), but I feel it with lunges and in general with movements where I don’t have much stability. So for me the best exercises for an additional day would be leg press and leg curls. I might consider squats lighter during the workout.

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8

I’ll try the calf work and extra glute training. I rarely do calf work and no glute training aside from deadlifts.

9

My PT is a sport person, actually made me do some calf strength test for strength and endurance, and I literally stopped after 4 or 5 reps. After addressing the calves imbalance my knee problem is going away. Not saying is the same problem for everyone.

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