April 24 Daily Thread

I have two questions for you guys, with backstory below.

1) Is there any reason that high-bar squats in a belt should be harder on my knees than high-bar squats without a belt?
2) Has anyone dealt with patellar tendinopathy/tendintis before? Any advice on recovery/rehab and getting back to squatting near-max weights?

Before Christmas, I ran for a bus after a (relatively) heavy squat day and did my knee in. I wound up not squatting or deadlifting for a few weeks while seeing a physio who misdiagnosed me, so I wasted a while rehabbing a nonexistant injury.

In February I saw a competent physio who said I had patellar tendinitis, and prescribed some unilateral work and said I could keep squatting so long as it didn't make my knee worse - basically the same advice as the Stronger By Science article on the issue.

My pre-injury squat top set was 95kg for a double, and in March/April I'd worked my way back up to that and hit 95x4. The knee pain was always present during and after workouts, but wasn't getting worse - though admittedly was barely getting better; it was very much a case of two steps forward and one-and-a-half steps back. However, over the past week or two it seemed to have really improved.

Today I tried belted squats for the first time, and it seemed to destroy my knee even at weights as low as 75kg. Even at my strongest I was weak squatting bodyweight for four reps, but now I seem to have really regressed. So, the above questions apply.

/r/weightroom Thread