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Hi Lance,

Have u had experience with athletes who hyper-extended their knees?  I hyper-extended my right knee, and my left one feels prone to that same injury right now.  The injury was minor but still, I can't do shit on it besides walk/very light jog, anything more intense I can feel pain.  It's getting better every day, as I'm resting it, taking ibuprofen.

 Dont do any plyos or  jumps until its healed, takes time.

From my own self-diagnosing, I believe it was caused by 2 things:

1) I got too heavy/fat from eating a LOT lately trying to get my lifting numbers up.  160lbs at 5'8" for an ecto doing intense plyo's and training single leg jump, I thought might be a bit much.  Do you agree?

No, you havent been training your hamstrings, especially as a KNEE FLEXOR, and youve been doing a lot of knee extension exercises, while  jumping repetitively.

2) I admit I made a stupid mistake, but past few months, I've basically just been doing full squats.  I think I created an imbalance between my hamstrings and quads.  So lately I've been doing leg curls and dead lifts (no squats cuz I can't squat with the knee like this).

 Depending on how youre deadlifting, it can be simply another knee extension exercise. RDL's are a good idea here, and use a 2-1 ratio of knee flexion to extension for a while.

I could be wrong, just my opinion on what caused it.  What do you think, and what do you recommend I do to recover from it?

Thanks.

  Trying to improve a single leg  jump without training your hamstrings makes as much sense as trying to improve your bench press without training your triceps.

  Yea thats fine  just be really careful with that injured side, it could be a minor deal right now that you can turn into a major deal if you dont let it heal.  Look up the PCL and see if that sounds like the area youre feeling the pain as well.   Id keep the reps high on the leg curls at first, then cycle down into a more intense heavy range.  Keep tension on the muscle the whole time, dont relax throughout the whole set.  That will give you the most blood flow to help healing atm.

 
  Where you felt the pain at the time of the injury will tell you more, swelling and compensation can show up in other areas.  If it doesnt improve with rest you need to go see the doc.

Hey Lance, it's been 2 weeks since the injury and since then I've only been doing dead lifts and leg curls.  I had to walk on my toes for my right leg to keep my knee bent so it doesn't extend, until this past Saturday I was finally able to walk normally.  It felt good, and didn't hurt when I extended it and put weight on it.  So today, I tried squatting, followed by dead lifts and leg curls.  First 2 warm up sets of squatting, I felt a little tingling in the back of my knee, but it wasn't pain at all, so I kept going and from the 3rd warm up set, it felt perfectly fine, no tingling, no nothing.  

Last time squatting was 3 weeks ago where I PR'd at 5 reps, 245lbs, today I did a pretty explosive single of 260, but failed a 275 single, so I don't think I lost much strength, if at all.  

Friday I would like to go and shoot around, play a little basketball (no pick up games) to test out my leg to see if I can play my league game on Saturday.  Would you approve of this? (Gonna have 1 more leg curling session during my upper body lifting day on Thursday)

Also, I don't know if this is important at all or whatever, but how come I had so much VMO activation/burn in my squats today?  I NEVER had this before?  Does it have anything to do with the squat break + p-chain only lifting I've been doing?

Anyways, thanks for all the rehab tips, it's been going great.

Have you ever gotten into someone that is great at hamstring hip extensor activities and yet sucks at hamstring leg curling activities, Lance? I'm not sure if I have... I wonder if such a person exists

What if a guy only does hamstring hip extensor strength training for a long period of time (say two years) and never does any leg curls or knee flexion hamstring activities. Can then a big gap appear in between these two "hamstring events"? Or the hamstring is just a muscle, it doesn't care how you train it?

Well... while walking around campus today, when I kind of took a small hop down a stair landing with the knee extended, I felt a little pain in my knee again.  It's significantly less severe than last week when it was still hurting, but still, it would be stupid to put this knee in a league game in as little as 3 days.  I'll shoot for next saturday for my return.

You say higher reps is better for healing the joint, but I also need to eventually do heavier weight for strength. 

Is 20 reps what you consider high reps?  Also I can just do both right?  3x8 heavier and then right after do 3x20 light...

Thanks.