A Timeline of My Knee Rehab Part 2

So during part 1 we reached the end of November and here's where I had accomplished since August when I first did the knee:

- got my front squat strength back up to 100kgs in about 4 weeks
- worked front squat lockouts up to 130kgs in the next 4 weeks after front squats
- worked my pistol squat down to almost, if not, parallel on the injured right knee in about 6 weeks
- finally started medium sloped hill sprints after 106 not being able to run with some knee pain but nothing bad enough to stop me (I'm amazing)
- and I had just started romanian deadlifts triphasic training style for posterior chain strength and some reactive (hate the term agility ladder - it doesn't build actual agility people!!) to lower leg stiffness and to start putting some force into the ground on a frequent basis.

My next steps were to improve ground reactive force with high force using these principles:

 - High to Low Force

 - Low to High Velocity

 - Low to High Impact

I also planned not to start any other conditioning work until I've completed all my planned speed work.

So how have I ended up? Read on.

Days 1 to 8 - performed 3 sessions up the medium steep hill x 10, 15 then 20 sets of about 25m with the fastest set at 4.25secs. Triphasic romanian deadlifts up to 77.5kgs for 5 x 1 with 5sec eccentrics.

Days 10 to 15 - performed 3 sessions up the very steep hill x 7, 10 and 11 sets of about 27m with the fastest set being 5.50secs. Triphasic romanian deadlifts up to 82.5kgs for 4 x 1 with 5sec eccentric.

Days 17 to 23 - performed 3 sessions of sled resisted sprints with day 1 being 10m, day 2 being 10 and 20m and day 3 being 20m. Triphasic romanian deadlifts with 5sec eccentrics topped out at 4 x 1 2 85kgs then I shifted to 3sec isometrics stating back at 6 x 1 and finishing this week "block" at 85kgs as well for those.

Days 25 to 36 - performed various sprints over 10, 20 and 30m at bodyweight. Triphasic romanian deadlifts up to 97.5kgs for 4 x 1 by the end of this block. Had a somewhat testing day Christmas eve with a fair bit of fatigue built up from the previous 5 - 6 weeks and wasn't great but I time all my sprints and I hadn't been fast for weeks. Not a huge worry as I'm still in the "getting back to top speed" phase.

I had Christmas day and the next 2 days off to recover from the decent workload pre-Christmas and planned my next block which was aimed at improving ground force reaction again as well as reactiveness with depth vertical and long jumps.

During my third session of this I trained on a day that my HRV said to take off but alas I battled on and blew the back out! Didn't feel real bad when I did it but it hung around a bit longer then past blow ups and I didn't stand up straight for at least a good week after it! Still feel it a tad now actually.

So I had to alter my plan.

The depth jump blitz was to run for about 3 and a half weeks and then I had planned to start my aerobic conditioning block but as any form of impact was again out of the question (not cool) I shifted my aerobic block forward. Most of my conditioning stuff is 'off legs" stuff like cross trainer, boxing, manual treadmill, ropes etc so impact is minimal.

So my first block of aerobic conditioning I'm doing high resistance intervals x 3 sessions, explosive repeats x 3 sessions and aerobic plyometrics x 4 sessions. These are all methods taken from Joel Jamieson's book Ultimate MMA Conditioning which is THE go-to guide for conditioning these days.

I'll actually post what each of these are and how they improve your conditioning in a future post.

So right now my back is pretty good (finally), the knee is fine although I still feel and have some restriction there but I still haven't had it looked at but I have a MRI referral if I need it.

After my 10 "prep" conditioning sessions I then have another 12 conditioning sessions which is the main program followed by a 13 session speed block based on some of Chris Korfists's stuff. While I'm out of sprinting action I'm doing all the speed prep and warm up drills so I'm more then ready to go for the full sprints.

This will take me right up to April 5th which is the Tuesday before round 1 so without another hick-up (knock on wood), I'll be primed to kick a bag round 1!

This is my plan so what does yours look like? If you don't have one then try the one I made up for the Ultimate Aussie Rules Training Manual!