Working out / health and fitness

I had a meniscus injury about a 1.5 years ago. I wrote about it in some detail in this sub-forum so do a search if you like, but the gist is:

  • Injured knee during mountain climbing.
  • Wasn’t horrible at first. Tried to treat/heal without surgery.
  • Didn’t work. Tear got significantly worse after a few months, to the point where I could no longer walk.
  • Got MRI to confirm tear. No way to confirm without MRI.
  • Did injections for a while just to be able to minimally function, but writing was on wall. I needed surgery.
  • Got surgery about 6 months after initial injury.
  • Surgery was a success but leg strength was significantly deteriorated.
  • It’s taken a full year of rehab to get back to near full strength.
  • A couple weeks ago climbed the same mountain my injury occurred on. Running/jumping is still a work in progress, but otherwise back to fully range of activity.
  • Knowing what I now know, regret not having gotten the surgery sooner.
  • Best of luck!
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Hey. I’m really not sure, my approach is to try lots of things until I find something I’m really bad at. Especially if one side is worse than the other.

My issues stem from a broken ankle that really fucked up everything from my big toe to my middle back.

At the moment I’m doing banded clam shells with a booty band and one leg kettle bell deadlifts. Together with fixing my foot issues, and being very slow and careful on squats and deadlifts I seem to be making some progress.

I’d recommend having a look through those big lists of excercises on google and pick two or three you would be happy trying regularly.

If you are getting internal knee pain I think it’s your knee caving in. This could be everything from your feet, your ankles, your glutes, or your hip rotation flexibility.

Also worth videoing your squat form, directly in front will give a clear view of knees. Check it yourself or post here if you’re comfortable

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Thanks. Yeah glute med is definitely a weak point for me, I can do basic stuff like clamshells fine, but if I try anything a little more advanced like raising my leg out of a side plank, I have huge trouble even making the muscle fire, I have to put my other hand on the ground for extra support.

Aso, those hip airplanes are humbling, I already knew my hips were bad but this really highlights it, my knee always moves a ton to compensate, no matter how much I focus on only moving my torso. The list of stuff I need to work on just keeps getting longer.

It’s gonna be a while before I’m squatting again, mainly because of this patellar tendinopathy portion of whatever’s going on with my left knee–or at least I’m 90% sure that’s what it is, it triggers during a certain range of flexion, and doing isometrics like wall sits or Spanish squats relieve the pain significantly for a while afterwards. But yeah when I start up again, it’ll definitely be a good time to re-evaluate my form and try to build up correctly from the ground up.

In general, I’m definitely feeling like it’s time to re-prioritize from a fitness standpoint. I’m almost 52, and having not had the excuse of lifting heavy to keep me at ~200lb might be kind of a blessing in disguise. I’d rather hang out around the weight I’m at now, and really focus on mobility and bulletproofing my knees and shoulders and other troublesome parts, and just be happy hitting some basic strength standards like benching BW, squatting BWx1.5, DLing BWx2 for a handful of reps, and maintaining it. I’m not gonna be setting any PRs at this point and I’m more than fine with that.

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Ok I haven’t had good sleeping habits for probably over a decade but lately have been going to bed significantly earlier than usual and I feel fucking great, like I unlocked some sort of super power. If I had to guess I was getting 4 hours of sleep a night and am now getting 6-8 hours. I had spent months cutting down on my caffeine use but was still struggling and now I wake up feeling good enough to not even need it during the day.

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Yeah I am doing similar things (ditched squats, doing mobility exercises). I am hoping mine is just on the part that gets blood, so it can repair on its own. So far, unlike @Ikioi(Profile - Ikioi - Unstuck Politics Forum) my walking is ok and it’s not getting worse. Not getting better either though.

Hahah. As a big guy. Those lifting benchmarks would be a big win for me. I’m miles away still.

What’s harder?

4 sets of 10 pull-ups no kipping
6:10 mile on a track
bench 225 once

(I can’t do any of these)

— Jason Strasser (strassa2.eth) (@strassa2) June 22, 2023

I can do 225 now thanks to old man strength and working out for years.

I think I could do 6:10 if I trained incessantly for like 5 years. I’ve always had good endurance.

4 sets of 10 pullups no way, never. I have long arms, big body, not naturally strong. I’m not sure I’ve ever done one dead hang pull up in my life. In gym class I always cheated on the first one.

Hmm. I can easily do 1x10 dead hang pull-ups but I almost always do them as a single set when I’m walking past my bar at home and feel like it. Assuming like a standard 1min break between sets, I could probably manage at least 2.5 sets, could probably get to 4 in a couple weeks tops.

Have benched well over 225 in the past, but barely doing light volume in the one-plate range now thanks to shoulder impingement that I’m finally getting help for. If I took it seriously I’m sure I could ramp up to the point of doing two plates for a single within a month or so.

6:10 mile is the one I’m never ever doing. My cardio conditioning is shit and I’m old and I’d probably need actual coaching just to run “correctly” and not the plodding monstrosity that is my current gait.

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Yeah I may be too old for 6:10. But for a fat kid I still finished top 1/3 when we did 2 miles cross country in PE. I think I have a lot of slow twitch muscles. But maybe 6:10 is completely unrealistic.

All depends on your body type. I’ve never hit 200 bench, but can do 3x10 pull-ups now and could do a few more at peak.

Best mile I’ve ever clocked on track (treadmill times feel like cheating) was 6:30, but no where near that now.

Ok my ex says 6:10 is out of reach. She used to run masters track and never hit 6:10.

This is a very weird curation of physical feats. Like almost no one can do four sets of ten pull ups. Are you a male gymnast? Then you probably can’t. There was a time when I could do ten pull ups but that was getting to failure and I wouldn’t have been able to do another set, let alone three more sets. Like I’d do eight or ten pull ups, rest a minute and then struggle to do another two or three. Benching 225 is kind of intermediate, for some guys of course they can, for others it would take some training but probably half of guys could get there eventually with continued effort. Then running a 6:10 mile is pretty easy for guys of normal BMI. I’ll bet most guys with a 25 BMI can run a six minute mile off the couch, it’s pretty slow. Like 90 second quarters? Everyone can do that.

wat

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Yeah I actually agree on the bench being an intermediate thing, and I may be way off on the required endurance/recovery rate on pull ups, but the easy 6-minute mile thing is a nuclear take.

Easy for guys with a BMI of 25. I was a bad middle distance runner in high school (4:45 mile) and I think I could probably do a 6:10 mile right now at the obese/overweight BMI borderline but I might not. If I get down to a BMI of 25 I’d probably be able to run a 5:40 mile with no training. And “easy” isn’t the right way do describe it, it’s distance running so it would suck and hurt a lot. Maximum effort.

But as far as the athletic achievements, think of it in terms of who in a class of high school seniors could do these feats. Who could bench 225? Most of the football team, some of the basketball and wrestling team. Who could do four sets of ten pull ups? Maybe some of the cornerbacks and wide receivers, half the wrestling team and a couple of basketball players. Who could run a 6:10 mile? The football team besides some of the lineman, the entire soccer team, the entire track team, the guards from the basketball team, most of the wrestling team. Like I said I was a bad middle distance runner, thirty seconds behind the good runners. This is a minute and a half slower than a bad runner!

Yeah I dunno, I think everybody is blinded by their own personal experience. My BMI is just under 25 (admittedly for the first time in a couple decades) and there’s zero chance I could come close to that time. Back in my 20s at a similar weight, I gave running a legitimate shot (quickly learned that cardio was my least favorite form of exercise ever), and a good mile for me was around 8:00 and would leave me absolutely gassed.

Even saying “every serious high school athlete could easily do it” as you essentially did above, may be fair, but it’s leaving out 80% of us ordinary schlubs.

I’ve done 4+ sets of 10 pull-ups and have benched well over 225 and think those are much easier than running a 6 minute mile, wtf

But as always with these things it comes down to how we define hardest. Lowest % of people in the world that could do it? Probably bench 225. Lowest % of people that could do it after training for 1 year? I’m going with the running

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Just pointing out that 6:10 is a very very bad mile time that lots of people can do while four sets of ten legit overhand pull ups is approaching gymnast levels of upper body strength.

Like if you see someone knocking out four ten rep sets of perfect form pull ups you’ll be like damn that dude is pretty strong. I would anyway. If you see someone running a six minute mile? You definitely shouldn’t be impressed.

A 5:40 mile with no training?! I mean i suppose you might be a freak of nature, but you are way wayyyyy underestimating how difficult it is to run a sub 6 mile for the average person.

Nah, the freaks of nature can break 5 minute miles off the couch