Knee pop during a deep squat

[Phildude]

My left knee was a little sore when I fully extended it (when I was standing with my legs straight) and I lifted about a week later, did deep squats, didn't think much of it, until about my fourth set, went deep and the knee popped a small one (as it has before, nothing new) then a loud deep POP and oh my gosh, pain. I had to drop the weight on the safety bars, I could barely stand up, I had to hobble out.

Anyone know what this is, and what I could do about it?

Thank you very much for your help and advice!

[jfalco]

sounds like torn carilige to me. sometimes a little hanging piece of cartilige can get inside the knee joint. when the knee flexes deeply it squeezes the hanger until it pops out of the joint. If this is what happened to you, it will be sore for a couple of days and soreness should go away on it's own. only way to repair is surgery, but often it is unnecessary, and if it becomes necessary it is arthroscopic and recovery time is only a couple of weeks.
Other things that come to mind are all much worse and they won't get better in a couple of days.

[Phildude]

Hmmm hopefully it's just that, been looking up other things and one possibility would be an ... ACL ligament tear, which looks like it would really suck. It's painful as fck to walk around/get up/sit down/whatever, still the night I popped it though.

[jfalco]

Hmmm hopefully it's just that, been looking up other things and one possibility would be an ... ACL ligament tear, which looks like it would really suck. It's painful as fck to walk around/get up/sit down/whatever, still the night I popped it though.

This is one of the thing I didn't want to mention.