Last month I injured my knee and I can’t squat, leg press or do any direct leg work for that matter. I train Arms and shoulders on Mondays, back on Wednesdays, and chest on Thursdays. I feel like I’m turning into a complete slob lifting only 3 days per week. My upper body has gotten stronger as well as larger, but I’ve lost mas on my legs and I feel fat.
Don’t mean to sound like a bitch, but any ideas on how to keep my sanity?
Describe the injury.
You can blast calves for now right? Even single-leg calf raises and seated calf raises?
Can you not do seated, lying or standing ham curls?
How about reverse hypers?
[quote]derek wrote:
Describe the injury.
You can blast calves for now right? Even single-leg calf raises and seated calf raises?
Can you not do seated, lying or standing ham curls?
How about reverse hypers?[/quote]
First off I definatley need to go to a doctor. I’m very active and I’m pretty sure I got the injury doing something stupid and reagravating it everytime I ran or jumped. I’ve been playing a lot of basketball and jumping has hurt my knee.
I don’t know why but I love to jump I can dunk a basketball and jump over random objects all of the time. I also do a lot of bodyweight squats at work picking things off the ground and what not.
The injury itself:
Sharp pain in my knee cap when squatting, running or jumping. It doesn’t hurt to the point where I am unable to do anything, it’s just that I don’t want to turn something minor into a major issue.
Only time will tell and a doctors examination what my circumstances really are. Hamstring curls will be an exercise I can do, but any quad movements aggravate my knee.
Man you’ll have to wait for this injury to pass then. You feel fat? What do u mean
At least use this time to strengthen your hamstrings. You MAY be able to do strict stiff-leg deadlifts as well, you’re not totally screwed yet!
Also, it’s at least possible that you have a condition where your quads are so strong and tight that they pull the patella up and out of it’s normal location. I can’t remember the name of the condition right now but I’ll look for it.
So do this… Stretch the shit out of your quads and foam roll them until you cry. Don’t forget to do the ITB along the outside portion of the quads.
If you don’t have access to a roller, use two taped tennis balls or better yet, a 3" PVC with a towel wrapped and taped around it. Don’t skip this step.
You owe it to yourself to do these two things ok?
Honestly, suck it up and stop sounding like my ex gf. You feel fat…are you getting fat? No you said yuor upper body has gotten stronger and larger so my guess is you are fine. This kind of thing happens, do what needs to be done to fix it so you can go back to the usual sadistic leg workout people do around here.
You haven’t seen a doctor yet…why? How long has this been going on for.
I found it…
What are the symptoms of Patella Tracking Dysfunction?
Pain in front of the knee.
Crunching in the knee and under the knee.
Swelling in the knee.
Symptoms will increase with many daily activities such as stair climbing, cycling, walking, aerobic activities and sitting for prolonged periods of time.
What is Patella Tracking Dysfunction?
The patella glides in the groove of the femur and “tracks” with the bone as a person flexes or extends the knee joint. The patella is a small bone in the front of the knee that is embedded in the patella tendon of the quadricep muscles.
Since the patella floats and should track down the middle of the femoral groove, proper tracking is essential to remain pain free. If some force pulls the patella out of this track, the patient will experience pain. When this force continues to pull the patella out of its track for a long period of time, the patient will develop Chondromalacia Patella.
This condition is caused by a break down of the cartilage under the patella and is very common in athletes who do a lot of running and jumping. If left untreated little fragments of the cartilage will begin to break off. Chondromalacia will eventually result in a complete loss of the cartilage lining beneath the patella. In severe cases surgery is necessary to remove the fragments of cartilage.
What is this force that pulls the patella out if its track? One must look at and understand the anatomy of the leg and knee to discover the proper treatment of this dysfunction. There are four quadricep muscles. They are:
Rectus Femoris
Vastus Lateralis
Vastus Intermedias
Vastus Medialis
As a group, the quadricep muscles are the strongest muscles in the body. All four muscles connect to the patella tendon. This tendon goes over the top of the patella. When one of these muscles becomes too tight, it will pull the patella out of its track. Many health care professionals view this as an imbalance in the muscles.
In other words, they consider one muscle to be strong and another muscle to be weak. The rectus femoris, vastus lateralis and vastus intermedius pull laterally on the patella. Most often this is the reason the patella is pulled out of its track. The only quadricep muscle that has a medial pull on the knee is the vastus mediallis.
It is no surprise that almost all patella-tracking problems occur laterally rather than medially. This is due to the fact that there are three muscles pulling against one.
Most health care professionals are trained to believe that this imbalance means that the vastus medialis is weak and needs to be strengthened in order to correct the problem. Many times when the vastus medialis is strengthened, the patella goes back into its track and the pain disappears.
This seems simple enough and tends to make sense. However, the problem with this is that the patient then determines that strength work will keep him out of pain. We all learn that strength work will shorten a muscle.
If the patient continues with the strength work on his quads, the four quad muscles will all shorten causing the patella to track high. This results from the tight muscles pulling the patella in that direction. Similarly the three lateral quads can pull the patella out of its track, as mentioned above. One should not assume that a short, tight rectus femoris muscle means that the vastus medialis muscle is weak and requires strengthening.
It has been my experience that patella-tracking problems are caused when the quadricep muscles are overworked. When a person overworks (or over strengthens) a muscle, the result is a hypertonic muscle. It says in the Whartons’ Stretch Book1, "There is a big difference between a strong muscle and a tight one.
A tight muscle can be very weak and offer virtually no protection for a joint. Tightness doesn’t help–in fact, it hurts." Over-strengthening a muscle will not only make the muscle hypertonic; it will also make the muscle weak. This weakening is due to the fact that a lot of the strength in a muscle comes from the contractile range of the muscle fibers.
If the muscle is 75% short, it can only contract 25%. If only makes sense that a short, tight muscle will be weak. Most rehabilitation therapists conduct tests on the short, weak muscles and determine that the muscles need strengthening. The hypertonic muscles pull bones out of alignment, entrap nerves and restrict circulation. They will also pull the patella out of its alignment.
I suffered an ACL tear last September and had the surgery in October. I wasn’t able to squat until May. The “strength training” done in physical therapy was nowhere near as intense as my squat sessions prior to my injury but were incredibly grueling.
This is a situation where you have to bite the bullet and step out of the squat rack. See a doctor and find out what is actually wrong. Before the surgery I was squatting 420 and when I started again I was down to 205.
The good news is I’m already back to 365 after only three months. While recovering I set up a split that allowed me to work on a different part of my upper body every day and work on core strength. I added slabs of muscle to my upper body and my bench went from about 300 to 385. It’s an injury. Whether or not you let it destroy your training is up to you.
Might be patellar tendinitis? Does it only hurt with strenuous exercise or all the time?
Ice and rest should help.
Train the non-injured leg. It will help maintain some strength and mass in your injured leg.
Thanks derek for all that info I;m definately going to use th rollers and hit my hammies really hard.
[quote]PF_88 wrote:
Honestly, suck it up and stop sounding like my ex gf. You feel fat…are you getting fat? No you said yuor upper body has gotten stronger and larger so my guess is you are fine. This kind of thing happens, do what needs to be done to fix it so you can go back to the usual sadistic leg workout people do around here.
You haven’t seen a doctor yet…why? How long has this been going on for.[/quote]
Well I’m eating the same amount of calories and training half as much. I’m getting soft.
I haven;t seen a doctor because I’m full functional besides doing squats and shit. i’m going to make an appointment coming up however.
[quote]dankid wrote:
Train the non-injured leg. It will help maintain some strength and mass in your injured leg.[/quote]
do you really think so?
[quote]austin_bicep wrote:
Last month I injured my knee and I can’t squat, leg press or do any direct leg work for that matter. I train Arms and shoulders on Mondays, back on Wednesdays, and chest on Thursdays. I feel like I’m turning into a complete slob lifting only 3 days per week. My upper body has gotten stronger as well as larger, but I’ve lost mas on my legs and I feel fat.
Don’t mean to sound like a bitch, but any ideas on how to keep my sanity?[/quote]
Alcohol and drugs could help you not care~~ Really, I’ve been threw the same thing. Your just going to have to wait it out.
BTW. I’m not injured and I only train 3 days a week. I also know guys who are bigger and stronger than most the people on this board who only train 3 days a week.
single limb training, non injured side. Go to the doctor.
Sorry, gotta weigh in on this. Mr. Austin-Bicep should NOT train his opposite leg, should NOT do hamstring work, should NOT foam roll. He should STOP TRAINING low body and get his ass to a good sports-med doc NOW and not be seeking diagnosis from ANYONE online, no matter how well-intentioned, or indeed, well-informed.
This is coming from a 37-year old guy who’s been doing athletic training of virtually every stripe since I was 16. You feel fat, a-b? Try being in a cast for 6 months. Try getting surgery because you were too gung-ho to chill out for a week or two and couldn’t bear to lose an inch of precious quad mass till you got yourself checked out.
Sorry for the rant but you shouldn’t seek diagnosis for anything as dicey as this online. I hope the the doc tells you it’s nothing so you can laugh at me for being alarmist. If that’s the case, go crazy, but better safe than sorry.
No one here likes long-distance running, so the analogy will probably be unwelcome, but your training life is a marathon, not a sprint. Regardless of the ultimate seriousness of this injury, your body’s telling you it needs a little pit-stop right now.
Be smart and listen to it. DF
I would say go to a good sports doctor immediately. Delaying health issues only makes things worse.
Also, don’t forget about muscle memory. In a few months you will be close to where you left off.
Take it easy for a while and dont train legs!
I had a hernia almost two years ago.
Could not squat or deadlift for 7 months. Then could not train at all for 3 months once it was fixed.
Within 3 months of recovery and hard work I was back lifting more than before. Just keep thinking you will have time to pull back any thing you lose. it will be worth it, you really dont want a bad knee for the long haul.