Hey, thanks for answering.
I am 30 year old an my diet is clean and strict (the regular chicken/eggs/steak/sweet potato/rice fats diet).
In my last two years I was weightlifting and diversifying my routine with circuit training.
I do have flat arches but i use special insoles that were made especially for me.
Thanks
There is a very good chance that your flat arches and your quadricep tendonitis are related. Look up what Kelly Starrett has to say about it. You may be walking, and also squatting in a movement path that puts strain on the knees.
Here’s something to consider. As I mentioned, my wife had both flat arches and quadricep tendonitis that made squatting miserable. After two to three weeks of concentrating on walking better and then regraining proper knee tracking on the squat, her arches have noticeably strengthened and her tendonitis went away (and hasn’t returned months later). Look into it. Without being able to diagnose you (I’m no doctor), using special insoles may actually impede your ability to strengthen your arches.
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Thanks.
As i mentioned before, i am using special insoles and underwent an operation to my knee so i think my situation is much worse than what you wife had.
I carry this for a year now.
I would love to check Starrett’s video.
Do you have a link for me?
Thanks
You’ll probably want to watch a few of his videos. Just youtube his “rebuilding the feet” series and some other videos of his. Type in his name and quadricep tendonitis, flat feet, etc.
Dezer,
I found all of your comments to be very informative and motivating. I’ve heard of someone else doing deep high bar squats to kick the quad tendinosis. When you first began, how often would you do the deep squats per week. Also, how are things going for you now?
Hi. Glad to help you out. I was basically squatting almost daily, most important thing is to keep volume low enough that you stop while you’re still feeling very fresh and crisp, so much so that the next day you can do it all again, and infact proceed to do so. If the next day instead you feel even a glimpse of tendon stress rest for the day, and come back the day after that. Maybe squat against a wall to make sure the form has 100% consistency. Basically since then I slowly eased myself into daily squatting, even with very very low volume and load. Then when I felt completely recovered I moved to more conventional training, double upper lower split like mon-tue/thurs-fri plus the odd bodybuilding arm day on saturday or sunday if I still felt fresh. I did two meets this year, the first one at the end of march and the second one a month and a half later. On the latter I did a sleeveless squat PR with 375 lbs, and the day after that still no tendon pain, so now I really feel like I’m progressing again. I’d say there’s definitely hope, just listen to your body and trust the process, you will bounce back!
I’d add that there’s something with the daily squatting that really works. Possibly since you’re never muscularly 100% fresh you never really push the intensity to the point of causing real tendon damage, or at least that’s my theory. It may seem counterintuitive but to me it has always been a great way to autoregulate. Most of my aches and pains usually go away 2 weeks into Bulgarian light, given that I start very submaximal.
It always helps to hear the success stories and I’m glad you’re one of
them. I’m 42 and am ready to leave the heavy lifting behind and focus on
regular life tasks at this point. I would think that deep squats would make
things worse but I also imagine that the mechanics of the exercise,
engaging the glutes and hips could balance out imbalances that I surely
have. I’m going to give this a shot and see how it goes. Good luck with
the progress!
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I have one more question if you don’t mind. What did your quad tendonitis
feel like? Mine is not a sharp pain but more of a throbbing, tight feeling.
Thanks
Yes, that’s pretty much it I think. To me the first time I got it years ago I kinda mistook it for muscle soreness, because it feels like some sort of achy stiffness, pretty much like doms, but the giveaway lies in the fact that the soreness radiates from the lower end of the quadriceps, either in the inner or the outer sweep of the quad, so you can feel it when bending down even when the muscle belly is fully recovered from training. It’s hardly ever sharp pain, it’s that kind of pain that you can still sorta work through, and that’s basically why it tends to become a chronical issue if mistreated.
To be clear, while you were in the process of bodyweight squatting everyday were you doing any cardio? Also am I right to say you weren’t doing any foam rolling/ massage for the tendon? I’ve seen people say that cross friction massage on the tendon is useful for this injury. I’ve been doing this with a massage ball roughly every other day but it’s hard to know whether it’s helping.
I’ve had this for 7 months now and it is better than when it first happened but it’s showing no signs of completely disappearing. I got it above my right knee when I combined 3 day a week squatting with regular 1 legged jumps. That was stupid in hindsight but what to do now. Any help would be appreciated greatly
Nope not really at the time. Yet I think some light bike would be beneficial…since I took up cycling last October I had way less issue with my quad tendon, it’s probably about the low impact nature of the thing and the constant blood flow. For sure I’d advise against running, in the past every time I tried picking that up as cardio the pain would flare up in a matter of days. As to foam rolling I dropped it after a while, because I noticed that it seemed to increase the soreness in the long run rather than decrease it. I guess that when you’re seriously inflamed you shouldn’t mess with it. I’d say only use it as prehab for training, and only if you don’t have tendon soreness, in my experience it didn’t seem to help, quite the opposite infact. Maybe I was just being too aggressive, who knows…
Thanks for the help. I’ve started doing some running recently just because I can’t resist anymore. The pain has become a bit worse though because of it. My hope is that by running on it I’ll force it to adapt and heal fully as just resting doesn’t seem to be enough to fully recover. This injury is really annoying as even though it’s not that debilitating in the sense that I physically can run and squat the feeling is just constantly there which is worrying as it kind of seems like something which could never disappear or take years to. Is your pain completely gone now? Would you say your knees are the same as before you developed this injury? I really hope so. Thanks
Running is probably a no go, unless you’re at a very light weight. As lifters we’re generally quite clunky when running, and just unable to not push ourselves if you know what I mean. Cycling has all the benefits and is low impact. Swimming can be good too, I just happen to hate it.
As to my knees right now I’d say they’re fine, obviously I’m not getting any younger and sometimes you get that odd joint pain and they make funny sounds, but the lifting is pain free 95% of the time. Just keep working to it and learn to collect all the small daily victories in you journey towards full rehab. It’s crucial to stay positive because these thing become almost psychosomatic after a while, I learned it the hard way fighting back pain, sometimes we protect ourselves too much and start to feel negative, you know like those crippled old people. Don’t forget to focus on what you can do each day and cheer yourself for those things you accomplish, no matter how little! Keep going man!