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I've had much longer layoffs and I would say don't worry too much because it comes back really quick.  I squatted 365x3 back in Jan 2009.  When I tested my squat again in Jan 2011 I could only get 225x4.  I was unbelievably sore but I recovered and came back and squatted 255x3 my next session and 275x3 then very next session.  After that the doms subsided and I was able to add at least 10-20lbs a session until I worked up to 315x3.  After that progress slowed down substantially. 

But basically I would guess that you will be right up to ~350 within a month after that layoff.  Once you get there you will have to do a little bit of work to get back to 365.   

BTW, I think cleans and snatch evaporates faster than squatting.  And deadlift never ever gets hard.   

I figured it would go like this over the next month:

275 x 1
305 x 1
325 x 1
345 x 1

How often did you squat? I've had lots of overuse issues from squatting too frequently and am now planning one back squat session and one front squat session per week.

Haha, funny I am on a similar plan and I have HORRIBLE knee issues that only get worse with age.

Well, I was sorta impatient to get my strength levels up so I was squatting 3x a week.  Monday was OVH squats, Full Squats, Parallel Squats.  Wed:  Front Squats.   Friday:  OVH squats, Full Squats with bands, 1/4 Squat Walkouts, and deadlift.   This protocol did aggravate my knees and made it hard to do track work at the same time. 

I have cut back to:

Monday:  OVH Squat, Full Squat, Parallel Squat.
Wed:  No squats but singles of full snatch, full clean and jerk.
Friday:  OVH squat, Front Squat, 1/4 Squat. 

I REALLY like this protocol.  For me knees its perfect.  Wednesday provide excellent recovery because I do my full lifts with less weight than I squat.  The 1/4 Squats on Friday feel heavy (but are easy) which I feel makes my back squats on Monday seem lighter.   I also do hang cleans, bench press and pullups on monday and hang snatch, pushpress, and glute bridge on fridays. 

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.

Everyone is different but I can tell you this would not work for me.  Then again my knees are in no way "fixed".  For me I have to lift before jump training (although I have recently dropped jump training until my knees are better and I lose weight).  I find that doing ballistic exercise and then jumping kills my knees.  Wheras if I lift (as long as volume is light) I actually find that squatting does not hurt my jump performance measurably.  I also lift in the morning and run on the track at night because I enjoy sprinting enough to do it after work while I will always blow off weights at the end of a long day...

Also, I can say for me one thing that helped was dropping the deadlifts.  Deadlifts really really take a long time to recover from. I am naturally a poor squatter (had to work hard to squat 365) but good deadlifter (deadlift well over 500 without training it), and I still have issues when I include deadlifting in my programs.  I figure since I do full squats, glute bridges, PMGHR, and sprint my posterior chain gets enough work without it... and it seems to improve as my squat improves (the inverse is NOT true for me) so why do it?

Also, how did you fix your knees finally?   I have tried a lot of things.  I had PRP injections which helped a lot but didnt cure me completely.  Also tried those straps (useless) and now I am focused on doing TKEs, Stepups and losing tons of weight.  I have heard good things about fish oil, volatren (gel and pills) and a bunch of other anti-inflammatories. The weird thing about my knee tendinitis is it's incredibly painful but there isn't really visual inflammation...

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?

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.

Week two, second high bar squat session. 300 even for a solid but tough single. Able to do five sets of four with 80%. Big improvement from last week's 275 maximum and two triples with 80%.

Would be thrilled with 315 next week. 

i would imagine it is just CNS needs to be reworked up primarily...  the muscle strength should mostly still be there as long as you have done some sort of exercise in the 2 months off.  it's like the brain connection to the muscles need to be tuned up; get the feeling back.  you should be able to get it back up pretty fast.

i had like 6 months period with out squats (due to constantly stiff piriformis muscle pain)...  i only lost ~15% strength even the 1st time i squat after that much time.  i just did a lot full court bball...