[Melanie Hunter]

Hi Carolyn and Maya (and anyone else with experience on this topic),

Last winter when I started FUA, my 8-year-old ACL repair started aching when I tried to run, so I contacted Pete Dickinson and he gave me a couple of single-leg-strength exercises that completely fixed me up.

Now I’m chugging along just fine, but I still have a significant strength difference between my right leg and my injured-and-healed left leg. I’ve recently moved my running inside to the treadmill (it’s dark and icy in Anchorage), which puts me near the weight room. I still lift 2x/week, not on run days. Now I’m over-thinking whether to add an extra day of effort for my weak left leg. And if I do, is it better to do that before I run, or after?

I have this idea that if I do PT before I run I might throw off my running gait. And if I do it after I just might not be doing any real strengthening because I’m tired.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Melanie

Topic

[Anonymous]

Anonymous on November 14, 2021 at 11:19 am #59301

Best answer without seeing you in person.

What I would do:
Do a mini PT set for the leg, say one round for a neuromuscular warm up then do your run. To make sure your leg is primed to work well but not tired.

When you do your strength days 2x a do a full PT set for that leg, so get extra in on those strength days versus treadmill run days. And to the PT, before the Strength or as part of the strength dial back loads appropriately so the weaker leg is challenged.

Hope this helps. ( :

My apologies on not seeing this earlier, we had some additional snafu’s with the website this week and I did not get a notification of this post, so I missed it.

[Melanie Hunter]

Melanie Hunter on November 17, 2021 at 10:22 am #59426

Thanks, Carolyn, that does help! I’ll give your suggestions a try.