Part 1
Ted was a gifted runner. He was not just a jogger. He would finish in the top 500 runners of running events where there were upward of 25,000 runners. He did this routinely well into his forties until his knee began to aggravate him. He was advised to rest and to run a less regular schedule. He did and it continued to get worse each year.
We worked around his condition for a good while. I told him, “Wait until it no longer hurts and then wait some more. You have several decades to lift and a few missed sessions will not make that much of a difference”. We started slowly. Eventually, he was doing leg press, squats, leg curl, calf raises, adduction, abduction, and occasionally leg extensions.
At one point Ted said, “This is incredible; I will be able to run again”.
I said, “I don’t know if that would be a good idea, but I do know this. If you do decide to go out and run a mile you will probably be limping the next day. You have already demonstrated that. But what really is incredible is that you are you are able to lift 450 pounds on the leg press to a very deep fatigue to the point where your legs are unable to move and the next day you will not have a hint of pain. You have already demonstrated that as well.”
“Even more incredible is that you perform the leg press less than weekly without warm-up sets and you have improved for months on end. It will continue that way. AND Te
d the best part about it is that because you are not doing endless sets exposing you knees to unwanted unnecessary stress your chances of a repetitive use injury are far less likely doing this activity.
