joint pain

[turkeyhawk]

I've been on a cut for the past month, and have had bad knee pain since the first week. It was bad enough that I actually went to the doc for it, and I hate doctors. He said it was likely a minor MCL strain and to stop squatting for a couple weeks. I followed his advice and the knee improved. As soon as I started squatting again, the knee pain came back. My other knee is starting to hurt in the same spot, and my shoulders are starting to hurt. I had occasional tendonitis pop up before my cut, but nothing like this.

Diet is about 2200 calories, usually about 70g fat, 200g carb, 170g protein. I'm constantly on the move at work and feel like I need the carbs to keep going. I try and get most of them from fruits and veggies. I started at 221.6 lbs, and am curently at 200.6 lbs. According to the calipers I started at 27% BF, and am currently at 19%. Doing the math, roughly 4 lbs of that would be muscle.

I usually get 6-7 hours a night.

I've been wearing a knee sleeve on my right knee, and it seems to help a little. My lift form is dialed in, have been on madcows 5x5 since early april. I've been experimenting with pulling some volume out with no real difference.

My strength has dropped a little on bench, deadlift, and row. I was maintaining ok on squats until I hurt my knee and was ordered off them. I went back to squat monday and was seeing spots at 100lb less than my max two weeks before.

I take cod liver oil, glucosamine, condroiten, msm, creatine, and a food based multi.

I've read about switching to a lower weight/higher rep routine, but then I also read that I have to continue to lift low rep/max effort or risk losing muscle.

I also read that I shouldn't be losing more than 1lb a week no matter what, and then I also read that at higher BF% it doesn't matter as long as it's not a starvation diet.

I guess I could go back to maintainance for a while and see if it helps, but if I can continue to lose at least 2lb a week, I'll reach my 12%bf goal in 8 more weeks roughly. I'd much rather plow through this and get it over with.

What else can I try to do to eliminate or at least reduce the joint issues? I can handle the pain, but I'm kinda worried that if the pain progresses I'm going to do some real damage and knock me out of the game for a while.

[miacanesfan25]

Ice, heat, swimming, rest and relaxation. Stay safe, op. injuring yourself more and further decreasing your ability to train is a very bad idea, take it from someone dealing with a terrible back and bad shoulder.

[turkeyhawk]

Ice, heat, swimming, rest and relaxation. Stay safe, op. injuring yourself more and further decreasing your ability to train is a very bad idea, take it from someone dealing with a terrible back and bad shoulder.

Thanks for the reply. What's the best way to apply the ice and heat? Ice right after WO, then after an hour or so switch to heating pad?

[Stang12]

Take a week off from training, let your joints rest up. if you keep your diet good, you will also grow and recover. Intake more fats, as fats help lubricate joints, good sources will be fish, avocados, nuts and coconut oil.

Atleast 2400mg of fish oil a day, personally thats what I do with a supplement called R3 by Cellucor and my joints have improved.

Don't go as heavy, legs actually respond real good to high rep training. If you have any questions please feel free to PM me.

[Rog447]

What are your carb sources? Try dropping dairy and gluten.

[whitetigerwoods]

I have bad knees too and I started taking Animal Flex which has basically gotten rid of all my knee pain. Look into it if you can

[turkeyhawk]

Take a week off from training, let your joints rest up. if you keep your diet good, you will also grow and recover. Intake more fats, as fats help lubricate joints, good sources will be fish, avocados, nuts and coconut oil.

Atleast 2400mg of fish oil a day, personally thats what I do with a supplement called R3 by Cellucor and my joints have improved.

Don't go as heavy, legs actually respond real good to high rep training. If you have any questions please feel free to PM me.

I'll try and lower carbs more and get more fat in. I take 2 fish oil pills a day, but I'll have to check dosage. Nuts I can add. Do peanuts count? I love me some honey roasted peanuts. For routine, You recommend anything specific like 50-60% at as many reps as I can knock out?


Rog447: I have a lot of dairy, I'd actually call it a staple. 2.5 cups of milk, cheese, yogurt, whey (if you count that.) Gluten is mostly processed grain, right? If so, I occasionally have that but I could drop it and not miss it much. Out of curiosity, what's the tie to joint pain? I have an aunt with a gluten intolerance, but I don't know what her symptoms are.

Whitetigerwoods: I'll look into it as a last resort, I'd like to try and fix this w/o adding more supps to the mix.

[Skoorbmax]

As a person with a lot of tendon issues--so many I have wondered if I have some kind of a syndrome to be honest with you (but I can find none identified in medical world that only affect tendons while leaving other collagen parts of body in place, so I assume I don't have a syndrome), I have to say I strongly doubt you're having tendon pain as a result of decreased calories. I can't find (not that they don't exist) studies correlating calorie intake or deficits with healing rates. When you're on a diet your body isn't attacking tendons anyway; they should be fine.

In any case, if you've tendon pain now go easy on them, you need to rest them up and never, ever work through tendon pain (lest it become chronic, which it can quite easily). Always respect it first and foremost.

Although your joints consist, substantially, of cartilage (articular and cushioning like menisci) and ligaments and tendons, there's little reason to think a supplement that might help articular cartilage will do anything for your tendons. There's no study I've seen that convincingly links any kind of supplementation with superior outcomes in tendon damage (even though we know some vitamins are key to collagen production). That said, it certainly seems reasonable to think a poor diet could exacerbate problems, and it is possible that on reduced calories you're lacking certain nutrients, though I am highly suspect that it could impact you so quickly.

FWIW I hit all my RDIs on vitamins and beyond that take a little extra vitamin C and fish oil. I would pay huge amounts of money for a supplement that could solve my tendon pains but I've never seen any.

It appears that gluten sensitivity can encourage joint pain (I don't know what this means, though; is it tendon, ligament, or another kind of pain?), but if you are sensitive now probably you would have been before.

[Rog447]

Rog447: I have a lot of dairy, I'd actually call it a staple. 2.5 cups of milk, cheese, yogurt, whey (if you count that.) Gluten is mostly processed grain, right? If so, I occasionally have that but I could drop it and not miss it much. Out of curiosity, what's the tie to joint pain? I have an aunt with a gluten intolerance, but I don't know what her symptoms are.

Dairy causes inflammation in the body, I would cut out the milk,cheese and yogurt for awhile and see if you notice a difference. Gluten is in a TON of stuff, bread, pasta, some oats etc etc. I have a cousin who has a sever allergy to gluten and his doc put him on a dairy/gluten free diet and he went from not being able to play basketball cause his joints hurt so bad to playing pain free and now does road biking (like 200 miles a day sometimes!) Worth a shot you know? I cut dairy and gluten out of my diet and noticed a big difference.....joints felt better, skin looked better and just a better feeling overall.

[turkeyhawk]

(I don't know what this means, though; is it tendon, ligament, or another kind of pain?).

With my knees it's ligament pain, not sure where the shoulder pain originates but I feel it deep in the shoulder on the back side, its a sharp pain. That's actually almost gone today, it's just the knee pain that remains. I had read that a caloric deficit negatively effects recovery, and since tendons and ligaments take much longer to heal than muscle tissue I guess I made the connection that I was causing them damage while lifting and then not being able to repair them completely between workouts. Right or wrong, I don't know

Side note- All my tendon issues I've been able to correct with mobility drills and stretching. Not sure if that could help you any with your tendon pain.

Rog447- I have way more gluten in my diet than I thought. I'll talk to the wife and see how hard it would be to cut that stuff out of the kitchen. Do you have any issues getting your protein without dairy? Any suggestions for a good easy replacement?