Today was… good and bad.

Generally speaking it was good. Everything went as you’d expect. I opted to drop deficit’s in favor of conventional deadlifts. I was going to do that next week anyways as long as I was switching up my bench press to model 2, but I just went ahead and did it today. But on the whole, things went as expected.

What was bad was feeling beat up. I do think part of it is still lack of rest. Since the Overkill concert last week I just haven’t slept as good as I need to, and it’s taking a toll. Before I consider other things, I do want to deal with that first and see what comes of the rest of it. But regardless, there is one thing that is of growing concern.

My knee.

I am feeling more and more beat up on my left leg, be it my knee or the ankle, or now even my hip felt a couple pops today. When I went down for the first rep on the 225 something felt odd enough that I racked the weight because I wasn’t sure I’d be actually able to do the next rep. A bit scary, but I did a couple bodyweight squats, felt ok, and went back to it. But regardless of all that, I am starting to think my knee is not some problem that will heal in time — I think I do have something wrong with it. But I fear it’s only going to be thousands of dollars for an MRI that will tell me there’s nothing else to do but either rehab it or get surgery — and if I’m going to get surgery I might as well wait until the knee blows out. sigh If I gotta go under the knife, incur the expense, the downtime, etc., might as well wait until I truly can’t live without it. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Because of this, the squat work sets focused heavily on form. I didn’t care about bar speed, I just wanted everything to be perfect. I find that yes in fact I am leaning some to my right, favoring my right leg to do more work. So whereas normally I put the blinds down so I don’t see my reflection in the windows, I’m keeping the blinds up so I precisely watch my form as I squat to ensure I’m staying level and evenly distributed. I am also finding my eye and head position matters a lot in terms of helping me keep “distributed” — haven’t nailed down precisely the spot because it kinda changes as I stand up, but I’ll nail it down eventually.

It made me think of a few changes I might consider making.

First, I thought about changing deadlifts to sumo-style. I’ve always done conventional and supposedly my body mechanics are better suited for conventional. But, I tried a very poor sumo stance today — didn’t actually pull, just got into such a stance and “air lifted”. It didn’t seem to affect my knee so much. So… not sure I will do it, but I probably will start reading a lot of articles on sumo technique, then if I do start, start with like 135 on the bar and just try to figure out the technique. We’ll see.

Second, I also thought about changing my lifting to be more bodybuilder style. Lower the intensity, up the volume, and see if that puts a little less wear and tear on me. Some day it does, others say it may not because now you use the joints more often. I’m thinking about it. I think it may also be due to the diet — I’m still lifting pretty intensely, and with the weight-loss diet it just may not be supporting it.

Anyways, that’s that. Every day is something new.

Based upon Paul Carter’s Basebuilding

• Squats (model 1)
  • bar x 5
  • bar x 5
  • 150 x 5
  • 175 x 4
  • 205 x 3
  • 225 x 2
  • 260 x 1
  • 180 x 5
  • 180 x 5
  • 180 x 5
  • 180 x 5
  • 180 x 5
• Conventional Deadlift (model 1)
  • 315 x 3
  • 315 x 3
  • 315 x 3
  • 315 x 3
  • 315 x 3
• Leg Press
  • 165 x 20
  • 165 x 20