to the guru’s and innovator’s: for a transitional 10 week training period if you were to design a leg/quad training program for someone with significant knee pain beyond 30 degrees of knee flexion what would it be?
I don’t know about creating a program for you but a good exercise that focuses on the quads is barbell hacksquats.
deadlifts both sumo and convenbtional. go as low as you can and use some back. high box squats and sit wayyyy back. start lowering the height of the box as the pain goes away. use a variety of stances on the squats to emphasize the quads and posterior chain. also some partial squats and partial deadlifts.
also, see a sports dr or other “expert” and find out what is causing the knee pain. if its serious, back off. if its not serious, take some aleeve and keep going.
I think there’s an issoe that needs to be cleared up before any useful recommendations can be made. Does the pain only come when going past 30 degrees flexion on leg extensions only, or on bending the knee past 30 degrees flexion in ANY axercise? I would think that sissy squats would do something here, but might be harder on the knees than extensions. I think if you have problems with ANY flexion past 30 degrees, you’re pretty well screwed, but I may be wrong. Maybe you could shed some light on this.
Try speed cycling. I see some bike riders with well developed quads. If you can’t do that then see a doctor.
Okay, another thread got me thinking on this – how about skating with a low body position, ala speed skaters. Would definitely work the quads (just look at those guys), but doesn’t require a lot of knee flexion. Might be worth giving a shot. Not the type of movement you were thinking of, but could help.
thanks for the ideas.I get bad pain during the first 30 degrees or so on ANY exercise (I miss squats!)… then the pain pretty much subsides on the remaining movement. I’ll be honest… never had pain (during years of ‘parallel’ squats) til it began creeping in on my first Ian King ‘pain’ series doing full range movements. I want to go through an alternative program for 8 weeks or so.
Here is another exercise you might try:
Sit on a bench,with one leg on the floor and the other on the bench, keeping your bench leg straight, slowly raise it as high as you can. Then hold for the count of three. Now lower it slowly. This will work the Rectus muscle.
Give it a try.
Guessing from what you write it might be just an inflammation in the patella region caused by subjecting the knees to too much load. This does not necessarily mean that you used bad form in your exercise but can also be caused by switching to a new, very intensive training program without proper preparation. Tendons and ligaments do not adopt as quickly to increased load as muscles do, therefore it is easy to overdo
it. Unfortunately it is not easy to find out how much is too much, until your joints actually start aching. What makes the whole thing worse is that once the joints start hurting, it is difficult to get rid the pain.
And the longer you live with the pain but still continue to put load on your joint (and do further damage), the harder it will be to get rid of it. The point is, get rid of your pain right now, before even considering serious leg training. Progress is made by continous work and the biggest spoilers are injury and sickness (and pizza and beer). Low weight and very high reps (20+) are sometimes very good
(but stay away from failure) and should give you a good pump as well. It doesn’t always work, but you will feel a significant improvement in one or two days after the workout if it does.
Why don’t you seek an MD’s opinion about this problem? This seems like a potentially serious thing that may get worse if you do the wrong activity.