How Andy fixed his knee pain and added 100kg to his deadlift

In my last article, I showed you how I used the Dysfunctional training principles to help Aran solve his elbow pain and gain 12kg of mass.

In this article, I'm going to break down how my client Andy was able to use the same methods to fix his knee pain, and more than double his strength on the deadlift.

How Andy started

Andy came to me with a knee injury he had been suffering from for many years, and a plateau in his strength progress.

His knee pain had dented his confidence with activities he loved like climbing and cycling. Dancing at events was starting to feel like a knee injury waiting to happen.

He had also found a plateau in his strength and muscle progress. He was deadlifting about 60-70kg, and wanting to achieve callisthenic goals like a pistol squat and muscle up,

Andy started at 60kg, and worked his way up to 160kg.

Andy's results

Within a few months, Andy's knee pain was no longer a hinderance. He had even unlocked the ability to do a full range of motion pistol / single leg squat, something he never thought possible.

Less than a year later, he had deadlifted 160kg with ease, twice his bodyweight at the time.

He had also gained enough strength to get his first muscle up, and do multiple pistol squats on each leg (lifelong goals for him).

Andy's original pistol range of motion, versus where he got to!

How we did it

As described in Aran's story, The Four Pillars were key here.

However the most important aspects of Andy's success were probably:

Progressive loading and poking into pain

We carefully and progressively loaded the areas that Andy found most worrisome for his knee. This is the only way to build true resilience and confidence in the joint.

This meant making gradual increases in load for exercises like deep squats and lunges, as well as training the supporting musculature like the hamstrings and glutes with jefferson curls, leg curls, RDLs etc.

Exposing Andy to challenging positions for the knee (like deep lunges)

has been key for building strength and confidence.

Consistency

Andy rarely if ever missed sessions. After showing he could execute 2 days per week with >90% consistency for about 6 weeks, I then moved him to three times per week. You simply cannot underestimate the importance of showing up week in and week out for rehabbing and gaining strength. We hav always stuck to the number of days that Andy can do with 90% compliance or more.

Andy achieving his first ever muscle up

Protein

We discovered that a major gap in Andy's current approach was his nutrition, where he was at least 20 grams below the minimum RDA for protein.

We slowly and sustainably implemented habits to get his daily protein intake to 100+ grams per day, which was when he really started to see his results skyrocket.

In my next article, I'm excited to share with you something I've put together to help you with your own rehab and muscle/strength gain journey.

In the meantime, check out the podcast I did with Andy where we discuss his experience with Dysfunctional training in depth.

As you can tell, we are both fantasy fans / nerds