Joe, I’d love to do sprints. Just as soon as I work through my current plan to slowly train up to running 20 minutes straight.
kmc, I get knee cave on unilateral movements so I suspect the foot issue is part of my problem. And I wholeheartedly also bless Lululemon.
Betty, I know! Pesky.
Patch, and I so appreciate it.
This weekend has the current potential to be a huge clusterfuck or totally OK. It could go either way as of right this instant, and I have little control over my fate.
BTW, good run yesterday. 6 min. runs x 4 and no knee pain. I might try for 7 min. intervals tomorrow if I feel good.
I’m not sure I can get Lululemon in the UK - I generally use Sweaty Betty. They have some great stuff. I may treat myself next month if I’m recomped enough to my satisfaction.
Cal, Sweaty Betty is a great name! I’ll have to check those clothes out.
Frenchie, the weekend actually turned out fine. I’m a bit tired and more behind than ever, but all in all I can’t complain.
Friday nights training was notable for bench press success and not much else:
Bench Press (3s week)
Bar 1 x 5
70.5# 1 x 3
80# 1 x 3
90# 1 x 3 <–rep PR +2
My butt was off the bench probably for all the reps and the last rep went up S-L-O-W, but I’m still pleased with this.
65# BBB 3 x 10 <–then ran out of time and energy
Sumo Deadlift (deload)
95# 1 x 5
115# 1 x 5
135# 1 x 5
155# 1 x 3
I didn’t really intend to deload deadlifts, but I just wasn’t feeling it. It felt like I used up all my energy on bench and I just had nothing left.
Squats
65# 1 x 5 <–trying to feel the outside of my feet
Banded Squats
65# 1 x 5
Trying to train the knee cave issue, just trying out some suggestions. It is actually quite hard for me to put my weight on the outside of my feet. It may be that my knee cave issues start in my feet and ankles. Will work more on this today.
Yesterday’s run was a success. 7 min. run intervals x 4 went nicely, without ITB issues. I plan on going for 8 min. intervals next. Its great to finally be seeing some steady improvement. It is taking all my discipline to run slow enough so that I’m able to run at all. My goal is to make it a whole 20 minutes of running before focusing on getting faster.
I did train on Sunday after a long, tiring weekend.
Squats
Bar 1 x 5
65# 1 x 5
75# 1 x 5
85# 1 x 5 <–starting to struggle with knees
95# 1 x 2
100# 1 x 1
105# 1 x 1
My only goal here was to try to prevent my ankles/feet from rolling in and try to press out on the outsides of my feet and keep my knees out. This was super difficult for me, and the video shows the struggle. Hips, knees, ankles: probably all combine to give me the knee cave problem. Slowly unraveling it, I hope
Military Press (3s week)
45.5# 1 x 3
52# 1 x 3
58.5# 1 x 3 <–money set, I was happy with this
BBB 39# 5 x 10
supersetted with
Cable pull-throughs
57.5# 1 x 10
62.5# 4 x 10
Ghetto t-bar rows
45# plate 3 x 10
The ghetto rows were challenging, but do-able to the point where I think I’ll throw another 5 lbs. on there next time.
Kimba: The thing about those squats is they look strong, but for that little knee cavey sticking point. YOu stand up pretty darn quickly. I think the period of knee cave (I’m not sure how to say this) is shorter–occurs through less of the range of the squat motion. There is definite progress.
I know for me if I have a close stance I have to reeeeeally focus driving through the heels, or I think I would have knee cave too. you should see how jacked up my right ankle is and I never even paid attention til now!
And my knees have compensated…reason for the big q-angles, etc…ankles roll and over time pulled the quads/knees in the same direction.
Yeah that’s the problem I have too, Betty. The right leg is particularly borked - the knee doesn’t even track over the foot. I guess we all have our crosses to bear.
Cal, more reps at lower weights is what I do on Wednesdays. Did so today, in fact. I find that working up to the weights that cause knee cave has slowly improved things. The operative word is “slowly”.
Nadia, that is interesting. Indeed I can stand up with 105# on my back pretty easily if I let form go all to hell. I’ve not yet thought to categorize the knee cave in terms of how long it occurs during the range of motion. I’ll notice that now going forward.
Betty, we are both kind of messed up! Won’t stop us, though.
Joe, I appreciate your support. I’m slowly chipping away at a few things right now. Mostly I’m OK with this sort of sustained, long-term effort. Sometimes I do wish it would be easier…
Today’s training was just squat volume at low weights (and therefore no knee cave), plus some benching volume at low weights. Work is limiting my training time this week, which is a bummer.
I’m really glad that you are making progress, too. I’m finding that I have a similar thing going on with the knee cave. In my case it looks fairly imperceptible on vid - but that is because I’m squatting weights that are well below my max.
I have a point - round about where you have a point where I want to shift my weight to the ball of my foot and kind of use my quads to pull me up. I’m trying really hard to focus on sitting back into my heels and squeezing the hell out of my ass and trying to use that squeeze to push my hips forwards / up (knees out). Doing the latter results in quite a bit of a stall because it takes a bit for my ass to start firing properly. I can’t move much weight that latter way, it feels much harder, and I stall sometimes for a couple seconds.
See how the dude in my avitar has externally rotated hips? I need to learn to do that for Oly Lifting. For my pulls (like he is doing) but I actually think there is going to be a point on my squat ascent that looks like that, too. Right now… My hips ache when I look at him :-/
alexus, I’m not sure I can get my hips to do that either. Hmmmmm.
Today’s training was a successful effort to run 9 min. at one time… x 4 in all with 1 min. walks in between for a total distance of 3.5 miles. My knee let me do it today, but just under the point of irritation. My hammies and ITB felt tight, but not hurty. My ARTist stretched things out this afternoon, so I expect to be ready to train deadlifts tomorrow.
Next up, predictably, is an attempt to run 10 minutes at one time.
About running, I just took my son into Roadrunner for an evaluation/ new shoes. They made custom fitted insoles for his running shoes, did a video of him running on a treadmill, analyzed his arches, gait, etc. He runs track and cross country in high school, and he’s been having problems with a tight hip flexor. Anyway, I don’t know if they have Roadrunner stores in Colorado? If so, you’ve probably been there and done that.
Just thought I’d mention it. I’ve run for years without injury so I’d never felt the need to go talk to anybody about it, and I frankly didn’t really buy into this whole “need expensive running shoes” thing, but when you have some issues it makes sense to see if some of these small adjustments will help.
