One-Sided Training

Hey docs,

I was just diagnosed with a stress fracture in my left heel after dealing with some pretty significant pain. They’ve got me in a boot for 3-6 weeks. During that time, I plan to continue training my upper body lifts hard, and modifying my conditioning to avoid the injured leg. I was curious if it’s a good idea to continue to do single-legged variations of lower body movements on my right (non-injured) side, only. I know we don’t generally worry about muscle imbalances, etc, but wasn’t sure if this was an exception to that general rule.

If I were in this situation I would probably train the other leg, yes. There is evidence for a degree of cross-education effects, such that your immobilized leg will retain more strength if you train the contralateral side.