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Quote from: Gary on September 16, 2011, 07:49:53 pm

VOLATAREN

I dropped deadlifts and was going to focus on sldl specifically to get the hams more work without getting the one-rep max overload or just plain' heavy deadlifts.

Yes, squats feed DL, not other way around. Before my squat would drive my DL, but after my last squat gains, my DL went down. Then again I switched from low bar squat to high bar and that might have had much less carryover. Still trying to figure that stuff out.

In case you missed it...

VOLTAREN

Cleared up three years of inflammation, chronic and extreme joint effusion and pain.

Oh, sorry I missed that you are doing SL deadlifts.  Yeah smart to drop heavy deadlifts. 

Ok, I'll bite.  What kind of Voltaren?  Did you use the Gel on your knees or take the pills?  If you took the pills, how many milligrams? How long till you saw results?  Also, does it clear up the pain so that you don't have to take it anymore or do you essentially have to take it indefinately?

Gel form. Over the counter in Canada and the UK. I've posted elsewhere about the immediate relief the Voltaren provided in just one night. Two years of chronic inflammation and pain disappeared overnight. I woke up able to drop immediately into a Hindu squat, something that used to take about an hour or two of warming up. I kept it up for a couple of weeks, but I think most of the benefit was from that very first application with diminishing returns thereafter. With the inflammation cycle broken the excess fluid in my knees was able to be re-absorbed.

As noted, I had to take a couple months off from squatting and that surely helped my knees calm down. I stopped using any Voltaren at all during that time and my knees are as good as can be expected. I'm squatting again now and will be using the Voltaren after squat sessions, just to be on the safe side. I didn't need to keep using the Voltaren, but will use it a bit as a precaution now that I will be squatting again.

Re: heavy deadlifts. Yeah, I'll be using the stiff legged as a training tool, not training the conventional as a one-rep max competition lift. Big difference. I've read that the reason the deadlift is so hard on the nervous system is that it taxes the hands so much and the hands are one of the most nerve dense regions on the body. Grip strength is a window into the nervous system and a drop in grip strength suggests that the nervous system is overtaxed and cannot get as much juice to the muscles. I suspect that it works the other way around and that taxing the grip (as the deadlift does) drastically increases recovery time.

I  have the same impatience with getting my squat up, which is why I ended up with knee issues that took forever to fix. With my knees in mind my protocol is:

Front squat after vertical jump training
Stiff leg DL after horizontal jump and sprint training
Back squat, bench press, and chin up for general strength and size training.

Trying to stay away from high volume along with lowering the frequency. Two days of rest between front and back squatting, then three days before front squat again with no loaded knee articulation on the pull day. Hope this keeps the knees healthy.

Injured and then on the road for a couple of months. No squats since early July. Squatted last night, September 15.

275 was a quivering struggle. Quads started shaking on reps with 145. My max squat was 365 two and a half months ago. Now it's 90 lbs less.

Amazing how the squat evaporates so much faster than any other lift.

Anybody else have experiences with this?

I was injured and had to travel for a month. Gave me a chance to heal up and lose weight (I'd put on quite a bit of fat in the past two years in my attempts to "man up" to something beefier and stronger).

So now I have a chance to start fresh. I'd been overdoing it with the squats and milk. So I had chronic knee inflammation and effusion, was slow and was getting a pudgy. Strength gains had slowed pretty good too.

With my lower leg healed up, I've done a couple jump sessions in the past five days. My standing vertical is already back to my old best ever of 28" and perhaps a little over it. I'm down from 180+ to ~175, weaker on the squat I'm sure, but feeling much faster and more agile than I have in a long time.

So I want to build back up from this much better base. Standing vertical nearer to 30" than it's ever been in my life, body fat as low as it's been at my bulkier state, and a squat that's probably around 315 (down a bit from my high bar "naked" peak of 365 a few weeks ago). I'm looking for advice...

Got very clear goals: stronger squat, higher vert, longer broad jump, faster sprint. Upper body stuff is really backseat.

Any ideas on volume and frequency for squats, jumps and sprints? I was thinking heavy squats once per week and lighter ones another day to keep DOMS to a minimum. As for volume, keep it down and use the squat mostly to potentiate the jumping. Also alternating emphases from cycle to cycle: up squat for a few weeks, then focus on jumping.

I am trying to avoid getting fat with rapid weight gain this time around. My Olympic squat is decent at 2x bodyweight, but I need to get to 2.5x bodyweight eventually.

As for upper body, I figure bench, overhead and chins once per week is plenty. Not trying to bench the gym, and honestly more concerned with pull up strength as it used to be fairly impressive with me.

Gel. And it's working miracles. You've probably seen my knee draining videos. I had to do that because the inflammation just wouldn't stop and the excess fluid would not be reabsorbed into the synovial lining. This had been going on for years. The diclofanec worked immediately. No need to drain anymore. Pain went away and the fluid levels are returning to normal so fast you can almost see it. It's been three days and my knees are looking like normal knees again. Initially the right then later the left were so full that you could see it above the kneecap even when I was standing straight. Lately it's only been noticeable when I had my knees flexed sharply and then you could see the synovial sac bulging out on either side of the patellar tendon. Now it's all going back to normal (finally) and there is zero pain.

The VS athletics can feel really goofy and weird. They have a 1-1/2" heel, no matter what size you are. There is no in between with the VS athletics

My VS Athletics just arrived today. The heel is exactly 1 1/4" or 10/8" while the midsole thickness is 3/8".

10/8 - 3/8 = 7/8.

The effective height of the heel is 7/8". Higher by an eighth of an inch than all the others (I think) except Risots.  My Ristos have an effective height around the same, even though Ristos raise the heel as the shoe size increases to keep the foot angle constant. As far as I know, every WL shoe except Ristos have the same effective heel height for each foot size which means the angle at which it puts each foot is slightly different. Shorter feet will be at a steeper angle than longer feet.

I don't think this has ever been a problem for anyone in the history of WL shoes ever. 3/4" or so effective heel height has worked for people with size 6 shoes and those with size 12. As long as the shoe gets your heel higher than the ball of your foot, it will allow you to get your knees forward in the bottom of the squat while keeping your torso more vertical.

About the "unnaturalness" of needles...

Needles deliver life-saving medicines and in emergency situations they even deliver nutrition.

If it weren't for needles, I wouldn't be able to remove the excess fluid from my knees and train at all.

Needles may not be "natural", but they are useful. The barbell isn't "natural" either. In fact some people go so far as to say training with anything but bodyweight isn't natural.

I'm trying to point out that where we stand on these things tends to be a matter of learned prejudices instead of consistent logic. We see needles as useful in some situations, but cheating in others. They can be used to save, but not improve.

I need needles to continue my training. Some would say that the fact that I have to drain my knees indicates that I ought to stop doing what I'm doing with barbells, but I refuse to listen. Maybe that's part of what makes me so open to using needles for improvement. I have to inject myself every day to keep training. I'm removing fluids instead of adding them, but like any steroid-user I am absolutely dependent on the injections to keep training.