Jul 29, 2024

2024 - 07 - 22

Knee Rehab Week 6 | Deficit Deadlifts, VO2max, and Focusing on Grappling

Austin Haedicke

863 Words | Read Time: 3 Minutes, 55 Seconds

2024-07-29 06:00 -0700

It feels good to lift again. It’s been a while since I did a heavy strength cycle, and it will still be a ways off, but I’m at a point of reflection where endurance work has a less direct translation to grappling than strength, and ultimately the fear, the truth, the pain, the immolation of metabolic capacity work must be embraced.

Summary:

After 6-Weeks of focused rehab I’m pretty much back to “life as usual” — albeit at a notably lower intensity. Tactically, my grappling is still suffering because I have to compensate for my knee injury. However, tactically I feel very sharp and grateful to revisit some upper body attacks that I haven’t dusted off in a while.
On the fitness front, it’s relieving to know that cardiovascular I haven’t lost much ground — achieving a similar pace and heart rate as post-injury for durations up to 30 minutes. Strength wise I’m obviously weak in knee driven movements (i.e. squat / lunge varieties), but 245 deadlifts at an 8” deficit isn’t bad for 6-weeks post-torn-meniscus.
Below, I talk about:
being a guinea pig for a new periodized training formula,
sleep quality and transitioning form mobility to strength, and
keeping the goal the goal.

Training Distribution:

Overview:

6-Month Goal [12/31/24]: Compete as black belt in 2024.8-Week
Objective [8/12/24]: Rehabilitate right knee.
Weekly Intention [7/22/24]: Test strength training and running, continue endurance.

Intervention:

Overall Avg: 86%

Assessment:

Reflection:

What went well:

Moving from mobility to strength (still emphasizing mobility), has helped with my recovery. Obviously I still need to work on range of motion (ROM), but strengthening the tissues under load is also needed to prevent atrophy.
Garmin reports that my VO2max has gone down slightly, but my endurance sessions say otherwise. I seem to be able to hold a reasonable pace of 12 min / mile at 145 bpm.
Sleep quantity (> 8) and stress (< 50) are favorable.

Where do I need to improve:

Tactics: As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been studying a lot of film, specifically competitions recently, so I feel technically very on point. However, some of my tactics are lacking because I’ve been down a limb and having to make compromises or adjustments so that I can be on the mat or survive a round.
Sleep Quality: This has been a bit of a bugger. Between alcohol, food, and electrolytes, my sleep quality is getting needled from all kinds of directions. It has really hit home over the past few weeks the cascade of negative effects from — particularly late night — alcohol consumption. Corresponding compensatory behaviors like electrolytes and food, even good food, foul up the circadian cycles before bed time. We’ve also had some particularly balmy late night training sessions and I’ve been under-hydrated for which causes a influx of fluids and minerals before bed as I’m trying to not feel like total shit.

Injury / Illness / PR:

Running and biking feel fine for my knee.
Light (deficit) dead lifts feel good, but weak.
Squats are still tedious, don’t quite have full ROM yet.
Squeezing with my knees / feet while rolling is still weak.

Lessons Learned:

What do I need to do more of:
- Having most of my movement capabilities back, I’m ready to to develop a proper training program. I’m already running a few clients through the BioForce CCC formula, but it always provides insight to use myself as a guinea pig as well! I’ll be building a proper accumulation (volume) and transmutation (intensity) periodized program for myself — of course you’ll see the updates here.
What do I need to do less of:
- I need to hone in my sleep. Alcohol is a known disruptor and I’m probably due to write and update discourse on that. I want to put this in context, that I maybe have 1-2 drinks / day and most of that is concentrated around the weekend. Now, I still think that has benefited me in some social contexts; particularly because I’ve been working for myself and from home for 3 months — and officially in the black! As it turns out, I’ve garnered a fair amount of business by collaborating with other local businesses over a few brews as well. The caveat seems to be the late(r) nights and subsequent sleep disruption.
What do I need to continue:
- Believe it or not, just before my injury, I had drafted an article on “Re-Focusing on BJJ.” Obviously post-injury I had to focus on rehab which I categorized as “mobility”; though as I noted above, “strength” is a part of that as well. It’s also “convenient” that around that time I started my own business which allowed me focus on what I needed to build a better me and a better “product.”

Session Details & Extras:

What I’m Studying: