HammerTime

I started my Mom on SS 10 weeks ago. She is 68 and has arthritic knees. The SS program has made a big difference in her life and we are very excited. She has gone from body weight squats to 55 pounds now. However, knee pain prevents her from reaching full depth. My question is: Do we keep increasing the weight or wait until she can reach the correct depth? I am concerned that adding weight without proper depth will be hard on her knees. She is leaning forward out of balance and trying to get the bar lower without bending her knees.

Andy Baker

Been hearing and reading a lot in the media lately about the possible links between statin drug usage and muscle soreness and muscle tears. Even the Lipitor website has some info on it about this possible danger. About two weeks ago, this was all over the news and that was the first I had ever heard about it. Wanted to relate to everyone on the board who either takes statins or trains those that do that I can attest to this side effect first hand.

About a week ago I had a client suddenly yell out in pain during a set of air squats during CF WOD I was taking him through. He grabbed his hamstring where it inserts at the knee joint and has had a lot of pain in this area since that time. This particular client is well adapted to regular back squats and high repetition air squats as a part of his program and had no problems with his form so I was baffled as to the problem. He revealed to me today that he has been on Lipitor for about 6 weeks and the light bulb went off in my head about the possible connection between his mysterious hamstring injury and his Lipitor usage.

I then did a run through of all of my clients’ information charts that have ever experienced an injury while training with me. I had two other injury cases over the past year. One guy had a really severe strain/tear right around his hip flexor region during a set of walking lunges with no added weight. The other guy had a strain/tear in his groin during a set of lightweight thrusters. I went back into their folders today and guess what - BOTH OF THESE GUYS ARE ON LIPITOR TOO.

It was just so weird to have three different clients, all of which were very well adapted to the exercises they were performing, were using perfect or near perfect form, were properly warmed up, and were using little to no resistance suffered similar mysterious injuries and all are on the same meds!

Take it for what it is worth but I believe in the connection.

Lon Kilgore

Putting someone on anti-cholesterolemic drugs after one test that shows a marginally above normal result is wrong. A series of tests separated by weeks is required to truly establish the presence of hypercholesterolemia. When hypercholesterolemia is authentic then diet and exercise behavior modification should be the first prescription. If those turn out to be ineffective over a period of a few months, then prescription therapy should then be considered.

I also find it interesting that in a huge number of clinical laboratory tests, the results need to differ from "normal" by two standard deviations in order to be considered a medical problem. I'm pretty certain that this is not the case in cholesterol measurement.

High cholesterol is associated with premature death over time. It is not an emergency condition that any research I know of says will kill you tomorrow. That means a GP and someone with mild to moderate hypercholesterolemia has time to address the situation properly prior to prescribing statins.