There are two types of Masters weightlifters: those that can go in the hole and catch full squat snatches and full squat cleans, and those who can’t.

By the time many long-time lifters reach 60, their knees and hips have too much wear and tear on them to take the pounding of a violent, load-bearing dive into a deep knee bend. Many older lifters choose to train and compete while doing some version of a power snatch and power clean and jerk. This works especially well for lifters who have retained great back strength and can still do heavy half or quarter squats. I occasionally use the power clean in competition myself, but I prefer the squat clean.
There are many components to successful Olympic lifting. Perhaps the easiest component to train and measure is leg strength. Legs are also easy to overtrain. Knees or quads are often injured, and training regularly needs to be worked around these injuries. Whether you go deep in the hole or not, the use of common sense in leg training is recommended.

During the last six months of 2017, I committed to an extended knee and quad rehabilitation training phase. November and December were the last two months of that phase and included the introduction of harder and heavier leg training. The following observations and comments about those two months may be of some value to the Masters lifter.

During the 61-day period, I had 16 workouts that contained direct leg exercises. This equates to about one leg day every four days. I was also doing pulls, power and squat snatches, power and squat cleans, with and without jerks, once a week. These exercises provided substantial “other” leg work. They were sometimes done on the same day as legs, but not always. The various pulls and jerk dips provided hundreds of low rep quarter squat equivalents but done in a faster, more dynamic manner. Pulls of any kind should not be undervalued when programming leg work within an Olympic lifting training regime. I did no direct leg work in consecutive training sessions. This schedule allowed me more than adequate recovery.

I believe there are three keys to why my results were positive. First, I selected a larger group of leg exercises that brought variety to my training. In the past, I mostly used either back or front squats. During this phase, I added trap/hex bar squats and wide stance box squats. Each exercise works a slightly different part of the leg. If my knees or quads were overly sore, I used box squats as my default leg exercise. Box squats almost exclusively train hamstrings and are easier on the knees. I also seldom did the same lift on consecutive leg days. Out of the 16 leg days, I did six back squat, four box squat, three trap/hex bar squat and three front squat training days. The variety, along with plenty of recovery days, kept my legs fresh and free from overtraining. Best of all, they quit hurting.

Second, I kept repetitions for leg exercises in the moderate 5-8 range with only one exception. That was the day I tested myself with front squat singles to about 95% of max. During the two months, I also had several 90-95% of max days in the clean and jerk. If you can recover from a max squat clean with good speed and relative ease there is no need to be hammering your legs with extremely heavy, low rep squats. This is especially true if you have a history of knee pain. I progressively added weight each workout, except for a de-load day. I used the heaviest weights in the back squat. I did no more than two sets of the heaviest weight in any leg workout. The goal was to have my legs trained to easily handle whatever weight I might attempt in the clean and jerk.  

Third, I maintained a disciplined stretching and massage routine that included using Voodoo Floss Bands, several specific quadriceps and hamstring stretches, deep massage, and foam rolling. The deep massage was inexpensive as I mostly used the end of my elbows or my thumbs to attack any sore area around the knee. The foam rolling was used on my Iliotibial Tract (IT) bands.

The knee relates and is sympathetic to many distant parts of the body, and everything must be considered when battling knee pain. Staying consistent with this mundane part of the leg routine was difficult. This kind of work is often underappreciated or disliked by lifters, but it is also a necessary feature to any leg rehabilitation routine.

The goal of this program was not to bring my legs to maximum strength. The hope was to recover from chronic knee pain and to reacquaint myself with the enjoyment of lifting weights pain-free. My legs health returned with an attendant increase in leg strength.

Training advice is ubiquitous. Training wisdom is more elusive. In our quest for strength, we should not forget the higher ideal of maintaining good health and general fitness. Rising from a chair or climbing three flights of stairs pain-free is also a worthy goal for the Masters lifter.