Free Floating Articular Cartilage preventing squats..F[30's]

[grand666]

Afternoon Mark,

I'll try to keep this short. I've been helping my friend's wife lately three days a week to get into lifting. After the first day she was hooked.

However, as the title describes, she's got free floating cartilage in her right knee from a severe patella dislocation 13yrs ago. She cannot squat even to parallel, not even talking about knees out. The piece of cartilage moves around and seems to always "get in the way" when she's at the bottom. It lodges in and she can't come up naturally without holding on to something. It also hurts like hell. The other day with the empty bar on her back she almost collapsed in when it happend. Then I stopped the squat session.

I thought that a very wide stance above parallel squat will be easier and the first squat session (after we played with different stances) seemed to go well, at first. I took two videos of her squat. It's not nearly the SS way but she can't do anything else. She never had a bar on her back, in the videos she's still a little unstable.

I would like your help/opinion on this matter. Is squatting very wide and high better than not squatting at all? Will it just aggrevate her knee more until surgery can get the piece out?

I told her I'm not comfortable with her squatting until she gets an MRI or someone can give me more advice on how to go about this.

I'm not a coach I'm just helping her to learn the movements. All other movements seem to be going good. Will doing the program without squats be a waste of time at first? She's very much excited about her other lifts.

Thank you for your time,

[Mark Rippetoe]

If the menisceal fragment shifts every time she squats, I don't see any point in training it until she gets the surgery. It needs to be done, and she should just get it over with.

[Briks42]

I had free floating bone chips in my knee from a severe dislocation and had almost the same exact symptoms as your friend when trying to squat. I had arthroscopic surgery to remove the chips and was squatting to full depth pain free about 6 weeks later.

[grand666]

Thanks for the feedback I'll relay this to her and her husband.

So is it okay for her to still train the rest of the movements and slowly progress them?

[Mark Rippetoe]

Anything that doesn't hurt the knee.

[grand666]

Appreciate the feedback Mark. Thank you.

[Briks42]

Hey, just a correction on my part. I went back and checked my log, and after the scope to remove the 3 loose bone chips, I actually started squatting pain free to depth TWO weeks later, not six. And I haven't had any problems with it since (the surgery was two years ago).

[kgreen06]

Same here. Had a large calcified floating body taken out arthroscopically end of last August and was squatting 2 weeks later. Coach Rip had me do 5 x 5 with 5 lb increments as long as nothing was hurting according to this post here. I added weight cautiously during warmups till I got to around 105lbs and started there with my 5 x 5.

I'm now up to 270 x 5 x 3 and the knee feels great (tissue around the opening he used to pull the loose body out is still numb and tingly from time to time. It was a large incision as the cartilage was about 1cm round) with full range of motion.

Get the surgery... I played judo for a few years with this and lifting as well and from time to time it really got in the way and set my training back. Surgery took about 30 minutes. I walked out the door with a cane, rested on the couch for a couple of days while doing full range of motion movements and was walking fine a couple of days later. I wish I had gotten it done earlier...

[grand666]

Thank you guys. This is valuable.

I was thinking to have her do leg press but since Mark said nothing to aggrevate it, we'll just wait. I'm just a dude trying to help her lift i don't feel comfortable telling people with injuries what to do.

Briks and kgreen....do you guys have an idea of how much this surgery costs? They have health care but not sure what the out of pocket will be. So no hospital visit? Just in office surgery at the doc?

[Mark Rippetoe]

The surgery will be outpatient, but since there is anesthesia involved it will not happen in the office.