Episode #121 the most underrated way to rebuild strength after an injury: why unilateral work > everything else

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Transcript

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Hello. Hello. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. This is episode 121, which is really awesome. I am excited that I've been so consistent with this, and the podcast is special to me because I enjoy it. It's fun. I feel like I can connect with you guys on a more. Casual level, I guess. And that's really cool. So if you're here listening to this, I appreciate you. Today we're gonna talk about the most underrated way to build strength or rebuild strength after an injury. That is my tried and true unilateral work. I'm going to talk about why this is so. Useful, why it's underrated, why it's greater than everything else, and why you need to have more unilateral work in your training. If you are coming back from an injury, or even if you're not, maybe you're just dealing with a nagging pain or sometimes you get a tweak in your knee or in your hip, like, this is something to consider. And, like, it's one of those things that I wish I would've been doing my whole career, that I've been strength training. But I had never really done much unilateral work until. After my injury and I'm like, holy shit, I wish I would've been doing this in the years prior because it was such a game changer, not only for rebuilding strength post-injury, but currently it continues to be a pillar in my training because I have seen how much better my body feels when I am doing unilateral work, and it is literally like night and day. So. I'm gonna get, get into it before I get down too much of a rabbit hole, but here we go. Here's why most people skip unilateral work, because it sucks. Okay? It sucks. It's hard. It is less sexy than doing a barbell back squat. Like I am not going to deny that it is not as fun as regular bilateral. So that is the one thing why people skip it or just don't do it. And it's, I don't always see this prioritized in. Not only in like rehab, post-injury scenarios, but like general strength programs. Usually you're skipping out on unilateral work when they should not be skipping out on it. And so this could just be a matter of like, it's literally never in your programming, whether you do an app program or you go to a group fitness class or you follow a template or something like. It just might not be in your program, but it absolutely should be. And I think people under they underestimate how powerful it can actually be as a strength building exercise. Like it's not just. Something you do for your warmup or like, you know, an afterthought. This can actually build some solid strength if you're doing this correctly. And if you are actually lifting heavy enough, but, like, for example, here's an example, like, perfect little testimonial here. Okay. So like I said, I did not do any unilateral work until I was injured, until my post-injury situation rehab process. Okay? And obviously you guys know I have an ankle injury and so that makes has made get getting my ankle range of motion back really difficult. So. All I've really been able to do until recently is just literally single leg work split squats, a hun, a bunch of different step up variations. And like really focusing on that and have not done as much barb up back squat. But when I have barbell back squatted over the past couple of years, I have maintained a significant amount of strength in my legs with a barbell back squat. Even though I'm not necessarily doing barbell back squatting yes, I'm doing single leg squatting patterns, but I've still been able to maintain a decent amount of regular bilateral back squatting strength, even with doing primarily unilateral and. And so that's, I guess, over the past five years, right? So and I see it all the time in my clients as well. So for example, I have, I've had this happen a few times. Somebody comes to me and they have a, they can squat heavy, like they can squat between two and 300 pounds. But they literally cannot do. Five box step ups on both sides. Just body weight, right? Like there's that much of a unilateral weakness. And I'm like, Hmm, no wonder you're dealing with some pain here. Okay, we got one side that's way weaker than the other. But anyway, so we spent some time just doing unilateral to. Get them outta pain, rebuild, strength, all that. Then they go back to regular, back squatting, regular bilateral movements and they still feel great and have maintained their strength. And of course you do have to keep in some unilateral for like maintenance stuff, but anyways, I've seen it. You're not going to lose all your gains if you do focus on a lot of unilateral work. So. Why is it so helpful? Okay. It exposes imbalances that are going on in your body that could be contributing to your nagging pain or issue that you're experiencing. When we strip things down to just single leg. There's, there's no way to hide. And I'm using single leg as an example so much'cause it's what I see most commonly. But obviously this also applies to your upper body. Okay? So keep that in mind. But there's nowhere to hide when you're just doing a single leg box, step up, and you're just pushing through one leg that's on the box and you're like not pushing off with the other leg, like nowhere to hide. So if you do have a leg that's weaker. You're gonna find out pretty quick. Pretty quick, and you're gonna identify that, and it's gonna be, it is part of the puzzle to why you're dealing with your issue. But if you just keep doing regular bilateral two-legged movements all the time, that imbalance is a lot easier to hide, right? So when somebody's just doing bilateral everything and they are dealing with a pain issue. How the imbalance will tend to show up is like, oh, my knee just feels a little sore after that. Or, my knee feels a little tweaked after that, right? Like, so they don't really think much of it, but when we do something like a StepUp test, find out pretty quick. Oh, I wonder if that's part of why my knee feels tweaked out after every time I do squats, right? Like, so. I can just reveal a lot when it comes to you dealing with an issue.'cause you can hide when you're using both your legs. And on that note, because it is so foundational level, it forces you to build more stability, more control, and build a strong foundation for higher level. Strength movements and stuff. And like. It allows you to still be able to build your squatting pattern strength, even when you're dealing with an injury or nagging pain because you can strip it back to wherever you're at. So even if you're doing these at a 12 inch box body weight, if that's challenging for your system, then that's where you need to start. That's where you build foundational level strength, and I think so many people. Have too big of an ego and they're not willing to actually scale it back enough to where their true strength is. And that actually keeps them from progressing because they're trying to do things that are too hard for them and it's, their body's not ready for it, and then they end up flaring up and then they just stay stuck in that cycle. So you have to actually be really honest with yourself and be like, okay, where is my foundational level strength? Absolutely at, because that is how you're going to get out of pain. It's the first step of every client I work with. We strip it back. Where is your foundational level at? Like, where is your strength at? Because, because no matter how quote unquote small it may seem or simple, like what matters is that we're actually at your true starting point so that we can build strength and progress from there. And so with that being said, like I said, every client I work with, we're usually doing only unilateral to start because I work with people who are dealing with pain or nagging injury or whatever. Like most people after their movement assessment, their strength testing. It reveals that, okay, there is an imbalance on one side. We do need to focus on unilateral to get you out of pain, rebuild strength, and then we will add in those bilateral movements again. But this is a lot of where my clients start. And like in terms of what movements we do specifically, it, it's all custom depending on their movement assessment. Strength testing. So with the strength, I mean with the movement assessment, I wanna talk about that real quick. So it's actually a 13 point joint by joint assessment that I do looking at your range of motion and joint by joint before I ever see you attempt to squat. I am looking at you joint by joint first to identify what is a part of this issue that you're experiencing. A lot of coaches will be like, okay, you're testing phase. I'm gonna see you do some squats. Like, can you do a pushup? Can you do a press? But I take it even further back, it's like, okay, where's your range of motion at? Like what strength tests are gonna make sense based on your range of motion? Because. If I have somebody who is, has limited hip range of motion, limited knee range of motion and limited ankle range of motion, limited big toe extension, I am not gonna be having them do like regular bilateral squats. I wanna look at a split squat. I wanna look at a step up, right? So that 13 point movement assessment, it also helps me drive. What strength tests we're gonna do typically. And then when we get into strength testing is usually about three days of strength testing that we do. So I'm basically looking at you single, single sided, and in every movement pattern in front to back. I'm testing you so. Lower body wise, we're looking at, okay, what's squatting pattern strength look like? What does your hinge pattern look like? What is your in upper body? What does your pressing look like? What does your pulling look like? What's your posterior chain strength like? What's your core strength like? Are you able to rotate like, like little tests like that? And then. Depending on what your roles are and what you wanna be able to do, I might ask also do some tric testing. So the, particularly for people who do endurance training, like running and stuff, I wanna see like, okay, can you jump on one leg? Can you do, what is your calf strength, like side to side things that are relevant to. The activities they wanna specifically be able to do. So that is a bit of a rundown overview of the, of what it actually looks like when I say I do assessments and testing with every client. Like that's how specific and granular, I mean that we go and in depth. And what happens after that is. I do a full review and put together a document of things that I found and I connect it to the issue that you're dealing with. So I'm like, okay, here's what I found in the assessment and testing. Here's the symptoms you're dealing with. Here's how all this is connected, and these pieces of information drive how I'm building your program out. And we build custom programming around that. And. And that is a big reason why the work that I do with clients is so effective is because it is truly that custom to their body and the things that they are experiencing. So if you are listening to this and you're like, ma'am, that sounds like something that I need, like more unilateral work. I need something truly custom to me, then I want you to send me a DM on Instagram that says rebuild, because I am launching an eight week offer called the Movement Rebuild where. We rebuild your foundation for movement. We get you confident in your movement again, so that you can trust your body. I'm not gonna fix everything in eight weeks, but we will get you moving in the right direction. So if you are somebody that's kind of been watching me on the fence, you're like, I think I might wanna work with her, but I'm not really sure about the commitment. This short term eight week offer is for you. We are starting this program in July. The start date is escaping me, but it's the first or second week in July. Okay. So if you are interested, send me a DM on Instagram, coach Ashley 1, 2, 7. Say rebuild and I'll share with you the details. I'm just gonna start launching it this, this week. I'm only. Opening five spots for this because it is so custom and I need to give everybody a really great experience. So spots are limited. DM me for info. I'll also put info in the show notes here. But regardless, I appreciate you for being here. I appreciate you for listening, and I hope you learned something.