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Hey kingfish you do a lot of GHR's right?

How should your foot placement be during a natural GHR (if you know).

The bar holding my legs down should be as close as possible to my heels right? Should my ankles be dorsiflexed or plantarflexed? Does it even matter?

Nicknamed LOLiquin for a reason!

Why don't you go with bulgarian split squats with a long stance (a lot of glute contribution, no knee bending forward) + RDLs for a while? No squatting. See how that goes.

Not a bad idea. It's been years since I did other kind of leg work other than squats really. In fact, maybe I'll switch over to a low-bar squat and see how that feels. If that hurts, then deadlifts (variations) and BSS aren't a bad idea.

LBSS I'll see how much it costs me, thanks again.

Ok thanks for the help guys. Here's a little plan I've made for myself:


Stop jumping completely
This is what started the pain in the first place. It's also the most stressful thing on the knee. Good bye jumping. I'll see you some other time. Maybe this summer. Jumping is a skill I can get back relatively quickly compared to say, squat strength.

Put squat on maintenance, if pain gets worse, stop squatting completely
Definitely can't just stop completely. I've hit so many walls where I've made progress and then lost a lot of the progress I've made. I can't let this happen again. But if my pain gets worse from squatting, then I'll stop it.

Strengthen hamstrings and calves
It's possible that my injury is caused by muscle imbalances. My quads and glutes are HUGE compared to my hamsrings and calves. It could be that my quads are taking over movements that should be aided more by my calves and hamstrings, like walking. I step pretty hard on my heels naturally and there isn't much toe-off. If my injury isn't caused by this, this will prevent further injuries anyway.

Foam roll and stretch quads and hip flexors
I may just have overactive and tight quads and hip flexors. I sit at the computer all day. I never stretched my quads anyway. Also, I've been reading that the quad does a lot of pulling on the patellar tendon and that can cause some pain through repitition, so I can alleviate this pulling by making my quad more flexible and pliable. I stretch hip flexors before squatting, foam roll quads before and after squatting, and stretch quads after squatting.

Hip mobility work + glute activation
If my quads are overactive, it could be they are doing part of the job that my other muscles should be doing. Whether or not this issue caused my injury, I should be doing this anyway.

Lose weight
Losing weight will put less stress on the knee in pretty much every single activity out there. Jumping especially. I was at 210lbs, looking to go down to 190lbs. Today I was 203lbs so I'm on track.


I'm pretty sure this combination should almost completely alleviate my knee pain before July. If it doesn't, I don't know what to do.

http://www.higher-faster-sports.com/jumpersknee.html

Holy shit when I started getting the pain I had LITERALLY every symptom that he put there. (low cardio, very strong quads, right quads)

It's time to work on my hamstrings directly. And it's weird, I think I have the REAL jumper's knee as he states it, yet I definitely don't have pain on the top of my knee. It's on the bottom before the top of the tibia. In that tissue area.

Now I'm really lost. To help cure it, he says that you should drop ALL quad work that causes the pain, but if it's LOWER knee tendonitis, then quad work actually HELPS.

WTF do i do? I know for sure I'll maintain the squat because if I don't go too heavy it doesn't hurt. I'll strengthen my hamstrings. I'll stretch and foam roll the quads. I'll add in hip mobility work, and I'll continue taking 3 caps of fish oil a day.

What leg injury did you have?

Ok I had just typed up a long post, but the summary was yes, it is all neural.

First though I'd liketo know,
1. Why did you deload?

I wanted to come back strong for a 405x5 on video, a milestone I never thought I would achieve.

2. How much did you "feel" like squatting during those first 7 weeks, versus the other 4 weeks when you lost strength?

When I was making gains I couldn't wait to go squat, but after I dropped so much I lost a lot of motivation.

After one week of deloading, you said 405 felt heavy. From my own experience, i think this is because the volume was WAY too low. Keeping voume higher will keep the motor pattern for squatting intact.

Work sets were 4 reps. I thought 1 rep for a de-load, 2 or 3x a week would be fine. I think I only did it twice a week though. Maybe I should have done doubles and some back-off sets with more reps then.

Well let me narrow it down:


Bad sleeping X
 - Probably not. These gains were made over school break and started to decline still over school break. Had a bunch of sleep throughout.

Stance X
 - Stance has not changed, though I did notice a great loss in bar speed. That, however, is due to the strength loss.

Diet X
 - I highly doubt this as well. I was at a consistent 200g protein a day, and stayed between 207-210 pounds throughout the final 5 weeks or so which means calories were at ~maintenance.

Supplements X
 - I doubt this. I continued to take creatine everday as well as protein.

Muscle loss X
 - I doubt this as well. I would have lost a bunch of weight if my squat dropped by 70lbs due to muscle loss. I didn't lose weight until I purposely started cutting AFTER the drop, and I've only lost 4lbs so far.

Neural Strength loss ?
 - It has to be this. If I didn't lose strength from muscle, then it must be from the CNS or something. There's no other place to lose the strength unless my limbs magically changed proportions along with my muscle insertions. Neural strength loss can be due to technique (which I already covered) or something else. Could it be from the de-load? Can a de-load account for a 70lb loss in the squat?!