okay . . . deadlifts are trashing my knees

canadianlbs

i kind of didn't want to admit this was true right away. was thinking of just trying to work on it quietly by myself for a while before asking for help, hoping to find the key all by myself. but this is the smart move, i know. so here i go.

and as always, i'll just say at the top: sorry, due to gym rules plus personal online-privacy stuff, i can't give you a video.

background is, i have been trying to clean up my deadlift form. mostly for two things:

1. get rid of slight upper-back rounding on the first pull.
2. get serious about the hip hinge and the glute/hamstring recruitment.
3. quit doing whatever i've been doing while taking my grip that seems to position me in a way that's almost more like a squat than a deadlift. hard to explain but i know what i'm talking about even if i can't describe it ;-)

so this part is great. and i don't think i can get away from the need to get those things right. BUT what i noticed on sunday and then again yesterday is: the better i handle all that, the more likely i seem to be to feel something in at least one of my knees during the first pull that scares the crap out of me. mostly the kind of thing that makes you go '*kitten*, did a tendon just snap?' it's moved around a little, eg. last sunday it felt like something bad behind the left knee; then last night it was something bad in the four attachment points on the upper surface of my right kneecap.

tldr: why is driving my deadlift weight down through my heels having such a scary effect on my knees? i can't figure out how to keep the knees 'out' of the picture, the way i've worked out how to do it for squats.

krokador

Um, my first instinct is to say you might have an issue with locking out (or even hyperextending) the knees. That could be due to many things, but again going with my gut feeling and what you said you were working on, maybe your hips start out too low and you overcompensate on the pull.

Do you scrape the bar on your shins at all on the way up? Are you AFRAID to? You might be ducking the knees the hell out of the way without noticing and maybe that's the reason why they hurt and pop.

Have you ever tried a sumo stance? Maybe your arms are just a bit too short to be comfortable reaching the bar (especially if you're not using 45s or bumper plates - I don't remember how much you pull). Sumo reduces your range of motion a bit, puts more of the weight on your glutes and by default your knees are already a bit more out of the way and less likely to over-extend on lockout.

canadianlbs

krokador wrote: »

what you said you were working on, maybe your hips start out too low and you overcompensate on the pull.

i'll keep trying with this and experimenting at low-enough-for-safety weights, but atm my feeling is kind of 'i wish it were this'. but actually, it's almost the opposite. two weeks ago, i was dropping my hips too far when i set up and i think it was taking my hamstrings out of the pull. the whole thing was a bit more like a squat in that respect and my knees weren't giving me any trouble. it's only been since i started really putting my focus hips up, chest up, only as much knee bend as it takes to get the shins directly up to the bar (and definitely they're not locked).

Do you scrape the bar on your shins at all on the way up? Are you AFRAID to?

you know what's making me bitter . . . it's only happening now that i AM really making sure to do that. bar on the shins, chest up, hip hinge. i'm so much stronger and it feels so much more right . . . but just around where the bar starts to clear my knees, bad things happen.

the lockout is fine, actually. once the bar's clear of my knees i'm pretty much good. and the first part of the first pull i'm good too. it's just the point where the bar crosses my knees . . . i guess maybe technically, that is the starting point of the lockout? so now i'm wondering if it's happening because that's the first point where my knee angle does change, i.e. start to straighten my legs. it does kind of feel like a very directly 'mechanical' thing. almost like my knees aren't tracking cleanly or something - even though doing it this way has actually fixed wobble and cave-in tendencies.

i did try sumo but not very seriously, so i may go and play with that a little. technically pulling around 130 right now, although i'm staying down at 100 or less until i sort this out.