That is a little odd I've never felt anything in the kneecap area from TBDL's, I have from front squats though. Something I like to do when doing heavy trap pulls is after a rep lower the weight and stand up without the weight and then squat back down and pull another rep. It helps keep my back in a good position each rep. Sometimes when you touch an go you don't lower your hips enough it throws off your positioning with the trap bar.
Or it could possibly be the other direction, as you may be getting too low when you initially pull. You could also try keeping your hips a little higher but make sure your back is not rounding as you pull.
You use standard weights so are they the same diameter as the olympic version?
The biggest standard plates I have are 25lbs, about 12"-14" (I'm away from them now so can't get exact measurements), so I do get fairly low with the lift. The trap bar rests on the inverted handles. So my grip is just 6" or so off the ground. Still, I had been doing 265 lbs with the trap bar quite a bit last spring and summer, and I wouldn't think an extra 20lbs would make that much difference. On my barbell deadlifts I can do over 300 now, and haven't felt any strain, so perhaps it's my form or technique with the trap bar, as you suggest. I'll keep your pointers in mind next time I lift with the trap bar, but I'll give it a few weeks to make sure whatever was wrong has a chance to get right. Could've just been one of the days when things don't go right, but I felt pretty good and the rest of my lower body felt primed to bring it up over 300lbs for the first time with the trap deadlifts.
So I was lacking motivation to run and lift last week and I decided to try to run Dan John's 40 day program for the next couple of months. I have some vacations, trips and races coming up and I couldn't get my lifting consistent on the plan I was following. The last couple of days have gone well, I really like the rule of 10 concept. A little soreness so far but nothing too bad.
The first two weeks are:
Squat
Dead Lift
Bench
Farmers walks/Sled pushes or both
Ab rolls
I might try to add some frequency pullups in there too? But so far my back is pretty fried from the carries and DL.
http://danjohn.net/2011/06/even-easier-strength-perform-better-notes/
Well, I like the idea of basing my workouts on one or two heavy lifts, as you know, but that seems a little extreme. Not a lot of time for recovery. I don't know if alternating easy with hard is enough recovery. I think that works for aerobic exercise, but I've always felt body zones need a good 48hrs to 72hrs to recover when doing anaerobic stuff at hard effort. It'll be interesting to see how this works for you. I like his idea of doing stuff by feel at times, as that's the way I've always done things. On last Friday's workout, for example, I did dips and shoulder presses, and mostly ignored all the other exercises, because that's what the vibe seemed to be for that day.
More and more, I find my approach is pretty close to Jason Ferruggia's, at least for strength-training. I spent some more time
procrastinating by reading his blog the other day. I also run endurance too, however, which Jason thinks is useless for his purposes. The main difference between his and my st approach is that I pyramid all my heavy lifts, at least going up, and more and more, coming down from the max as well. I've always gotten good results this way, so I don't really see any reason to mess with it. Sets and reps are completely by feel. The only thing I really mess with is combinations of exercises and their ordering. In my second week of combining two body zones in the same st session, things are going really well. I'm pretty sure this will hasten my improvements.
The one change I'm making, or have been making, is to get more serious about conditioning exercises, outside of my usual running and lifting. A corruption of HIIT, I call it MINT, or Medium Intensity Non-interval Training. I now have a full set of gear--medicine ball, adjustable plyo box, decline sit-up bench, ankle weights, and "power wheel" (which is an ab wheel with foot pedals)--in my office for doing 10-20 minutes of conditioning work as soon as I arrive in the morning. That, together with the 9-to-10-minute run-commute I have getting here, gives me about 20-30 minutes of fasted cardio first thing in the morning, something Jason recommends. I've always meant to do more of this stuff, but could never motivate to do it as part of my lifting routines, nor before or after a run. I think separating it from my running and lifting workouts and doing it first thing in the morning will lead to good things. I may already be getting results, although I'm taking it real slow and easing into it, to kind of let the routine shape up organically, and to make sure it doesn't interfere with my running or lifting later in the day.
I've uploaded the latest version. The MINT exercises are on the fifth page. I don't do all of the exercises in a single session, at least not yet. The exercises are done with ankle weights until you get to the bottom ones:
