I've gone an got patellar tendonitis which was bit silly of me. The patellar tendon connects the quads to the shin bone running over the knee, mine is inflamed and torn so I can not do anything which involves bending the legs like you do in squats. With this in mind I want to work on an upper body only routine and was wondering what people would recomend for this? At the moment I'm doing 5x5 Bench press 5X5 Dumbell Rows I figure there must be somet decent routines out there for strength trainning in the upper body?
An overhead press would be good, preferably military press. You could get a dipping belt, they're great for adding resistance to chins, pull up and dips.
incline and/or decline bench-dumbell bench dumbell presses barbell rows t-bar rows with barbell upright rows close grip bench dumbell pull overs to name a few
How much work can you do with your legs? If you're benching properly you should be pushing your legs into the floor as you lift. If the condition is that serious it may be worth raising your legs when you bench.
No it's not that serious, the problems really only start when I squat or when I run for long periods of time. I was worried about that when I was benching at first but it wasn't a problem.
I dn't want to do barbell rows because I worry that holding the position for them for a long time may be a problem. I'm really looking for an exercise that can replace squats but I doubt there is one.
cross trainer!!! have you tried using a cross trainer? i suffer with some knee problems if i run to much to often they jus seize up like a rusty engine lol so to prevent this i jus use a cross trainer instead of going on runs. i know you asked about upper body but if this injury gose on for a while then your cv will suffer an you dont really want that do you? but on the upper body side of things heaves, dips, press ups and basicly anything that uses your own body weight is good because you dont really wana start looking like a body builder do you? hope ive been some sort of help! jamie :woo:
Cheers man, yeah I've considered but not used a cross trainer yet. Reasoning is the problem I have isn't really a knee injury in that it's not a problem with the knee joint, the injury arises from a pulled tendon thats actually attaching the quads to the bone, it just happens that it does this over the knee. At the mo I'm using an exercise bike to get my CV, I may try out the cross trainer for variety in the future though to see howit feels.
My "gimp workout", from when I almost fractured my heel dropping a 280# Atlas stone on it. WORKOUT A. Seated Military Presses in Power Rack Weighted Dips Cambered Bar Seated Shrugs Heavy Grippers Push-Ups WORKOUT B. Weighted Pull-Ups Seated Dumbbell Presses Hyperextensions Heavy Grippers Push-Ups I would just alternate the two, so A-B-A one week, B-A-B the next. Might give you some ideas.