Pop Goes the Weasel - Or Should I Say Rectus Femoris!

After a week away in Vegas it was back to the grind and today happened to be leg day at my CrossFit Langley class and it was heavy day, on this heavy day we do 5 sets with 3 reps of back squats increasing the weight with each set till we get to our max three rep weight. Of course we do our regular warmups before hand.

All went well right up to and including my 275 pound third set, I felt pretty good and was sure I was going to squeeze out at least 2 reps at 305... Well I did get one off but at a pretty big cost! Right at the bottom of my first rep of 305 pounds, as I was coming up I felt and heard a "pop" that was accompanied by a very significant sting in my left Quad. It actually stopped me in my tracks and I paused on the way up, I was not sure what to do since I had a spotter behind me and did not want to drop the weight on him, so up I went unassisted and to be honest as I went up it was not all that hard and the sting was kind of forgotten since I was so focuses on getting this weight up and off of me.

Needless to say, no more squatting for me on this day and perhaps for a while :( I finished up the workout doing 10 reps times 6 sets of sit-ups, push-ups and pull-ups, and I did get a pretty good workout in for the day considering what happened.

So here I am sitting at home typing away on my keyboard with an icepack on my leg, not sure of the severity of the Quad Rectus Femoris tear? I am thinking it is at least a first degree tear (about a 5% tear). It could even be a second degree tear (more than 5% but less than a complete tear), but I am fairly certain it is not a third degree tear since that would be a complete tear and there would have been no way I would have been able to get the weight up.

Because of all of this I have decided that from now on I will only lift to get stronger in general. I am not going to do sets under 5-6 reps max since every time I have sustained an injury it has been during reps of 3 or lower. So there will be no more single rep Personal Record attempts. What's the point if I get injured in the process and I can no longer train that body part. That is completely anti productive and not worth the satisfaction of saying I can lift "X" amount of weight.