Thanks in advance for all y’all do! I’m about 2 years post rehab for an ACL repair using a TightRope implant. Right ACL pulled completely free from the bone from a snow skiing crash. 51yo old then, now 53.
I suffered a lot of right let atrophy, both from the injury when I decided to wait it out for 4 months before having surgey, and over the last couple of years of just not pushing legs hard in the gym. I’m right-leg dominate, and it was always a bit larger than my left leg. Calves included. It’s noticeably smaller now.
The weird thing is that it’s necessarily weaker. I’ve recently decided to do something about it, and start pushing legs hard again. I’ve just started doing Bulgarian Split Squats on top of normal squatting/deadlifting, using the G&C1 template. Loving it. Even doing Bulgarians, my right leg is stronger than the much larger left leg.
What do? Would you recommend just proceeding in training both legs the same, or should I do a bit more on the right side to see if I can bring it along faster? I just want it to look more like it used to, if that’s reasonable at all.
Welcome back to the forum. Been a minute since we saw you.
Sorry to hear about the ACL injury, though it sounds like you’re back in action now. Are you able to do all of the things you want to do now, or is there still some missing function? When you say that the R leg is weaker than the L, what’s the approximate difference between legs? Those two questions would help guide my answer to your query.
Jordan, I had typed out a longer response, but I think that was overkill so I’m deleting that and trying to be more concise and respectful of your time.
A quick summary to answer your question is I’ve not trained legs/posterior in a progressive or meaningful way for 3 years now. ACDF surgery 3 years ago, followed by the ACL injury/surgery a year after that. Both impacted my gym efforts. ACDF is 100%, so I’ve been training upper body as normal for about 2 years since that first surgery. Lower/Posterior work for 3 years has either been absent, or just very light weight and effort. Like 135lb squats just check a mental box. I was afraid to push my leg for too long in retrospect. I should have corrected that at least a year ago.
ACL is 100% healed. No mechanical concerns with the repair. Both legs are about the same strength. I get a little more stiffness in the ACL leg occasionally, but nothing to nocebo over. I sometimes have weird eccentric control issues in my right leg when walking down a flight of stairs or walking/joggind downhill. The quad kind of “studders” muscularly as it lengthens, giving way and then reengaging again several times within each step. The same happens when doing open-chain exercises like single-leg extensions. It does not happen with any closed-chain movements of any type, so yeah. Weird.
I want to return to former lower-body strength levels. After doing SS NLP and getting my squat to 3 sets of 5x295lbs@10, I floundered before doing the Bridge. In a matter of months I got my squat to 3 sets 5x340@8 on the Bridge. It was wonderful. Then the health issues. Last week I worked up to 2 sets of 4x245@8. I think I’m just weak/detrained.
What would you suggest? I’m thinking of just running your Beginner Template as I already own it. Or should I stick with G&C1 (4 weeks into that) and see if the combination of squats and unilateral movements improves the legs more? Maybe either program with added right-leg work?
I’m having some challenges picking up your current training, but I think you’re doing Gen S/C 1 after not training your lower body in a ~ year. If that’s the case, I would plan on doing the second block of the beginner template, to include some bilateral and unilateral lower body work, and then pick a program that aligns with your goals. Gen S/C 1 would be fine if that’s what you like!
Jordan, the challenge was my fault due to poorly communicating so much detail without writing a book. Thanks for the response.
To summarize more quickly, I’ve not trained legs/posterior properly in 3 years. I don’t think I could handle the volume of Beginner Block 2 in those areas. Upper body is in a fully trained state, so no concerns there and I could easily make the proper volume/stress adjustments for upper body to stay on track regardless of what I do for lower body.
That said, does the “shakiness” in the right leg not concern you at all? Just need to start training properly legs/posterior again you think?
So I’m thinking of running the lower/body portion of Block 1 to get that back on track. Do you think that is a good approach, or do you feel there might be some additional benefit for my healed ACL leg that would come from unilateral work in the short/near term on top of the compound movements?
Hope that helps explain. And if you think a rehab consult would be the ideal path, I’m happy to oblige. I feel “rehabbed” in terms of injury recover. Just want to get back lower body to a more normal baseline.