[quote]CharliePI wrote:
Hello Dezer,
Long time T Nation lurker here. Saw your post and had to create a new account to respond and share my story.
I have been powerlifting and training seriously for the past 5 years; however not squatting with the frequency you detail.
At a time I experienced pain in the same location, just above the knee cap. It was very painful to say the least; I could barely even bend down to tie my shoes.
Some things I tied:
- Saw a physio;
- Lots of foam rolling and stretching;
- Icing;
- Resting and avoiding all movements which caused discomfort;
- Heel-elevated body weight negatives…
… and so on.
Nothing worked the pain would not go away.
I did however pinpoint what may have been the cause of my tendinitis.
I had a change in occupation about 18 months ago, and this co-coincided with the pain starting. I started a new job as a police officer. On closer inspection of our issued boots i noticed that they did not provide proper support for my wide flat feet and my ankles would roll inwards excessively. I came to the realization that being on my feet most of the day and doing many kms walking was a potential cause of my problem. Also, i had never worked a job where i spent that much time on my feet walking around (new stimulus).
So… I bought new boots with proper support.
A few days passed and I had the shits from not squatting in forever so I hit the gym. Squatted through the pain and did obscene amounts of volume LOL (was probably not a good idea, but i could not handle not getting my rack time in :< ). Had the worst DOMS of my life, but funny enough could not feel the tendonitis pain with all the DOMS in my quads… when the DOMS faded the tenton pain was a little fainter… So i trained like an idiot again (2nd worst DOMS of my life :p)…
When that 2nd round of DOMS dissipated over-night so did the tendonitis!?! And about a year later it has not come back.
I cannot pinpoint exactly what i did right to fix my problem. But I have a few takeaways:
- Assess what has/may have changed in your life that is causing the issue, have you introduced some sort of new stimulus in your day-to-day regime?
- Check your posture/feet/ankes
- Dont give up hope (I almost did) the pain will go away eventually (if it is any constellation I didnt lose any strength after my extended ‘rest’ period :))
Another important thing to mention (that may have caused my issue). Prior to my pain starting I did most of my squatting to parallel; shoulder width stance, kinda between high and low bar, and putting on the breaks to stop at parallel. When I started squatting again (when my pain went away) I changed to high bar and only squatting ass to grass. This may/may not have helped as i may/may not have read somewhere that putting the breaks on at parallel isnt great for the knees (I dont know, dont remember, dont quote me :p)…
Thats all… good luck!
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Thanks for your words and the very interesting read! I do have slightly flat feet, nothing major tough, but if I walk in shoes like Chucks for a few days in a row I sometimes get a pain between fourth and third finger, it’s like a neuroma but after some time walking in some shoes with a thicker sole it goes away. I’m used to squat in Chucks, low bar, slightly more than shoulder width stance. Before I got injured I ordered a pair of DoWins since Chucks started feeling a bit wobbly over 300 lbs, and the side on the canvas feels not hard enough when pushing outwards with the knees. Right now I’m puzzled tough, maybe this happened because I was becoming too quad dominant, and maybe the 3/4 Rougues will just exacerbate that, idk.
I should probably rework my form and try to have more vertical shins, probably the box squats I’ll do for rehab will help me with that. As to my job I mostly sit at a desk, sure it doesn’t help with hams felxibilty but I’m pretty mobile because I’m pretty religious about stretching. A bit skeptical about going ATG right now, sure DoWins may help but right now I’m very far from a full recovery so yeah, I’ll have plenty of time to decide how to go about it. Before getting injured I was just going an inch below parallel or so, no more than what it take to have a lift passed in a meet, so to speak, it always felt good so far so I don’t know…