Quad Strain Rehab: Day 3 (Day 5 POST INJURY)

Intent:

I'm Still operating like I'm in phase zero. My goal today was primarily to improving gait quality - hobbling around sucks and I want this back first. The other thing I wanted to do was explore some movement combinations where I could use a yielding ISO on my injured right leg + an overcoming ISO on my healthy left leg, using the "cross-education" principle. The way we understand it is that training the healthy limb maintains strength, coordination, and muscle activation in the injured limb WITHOUT DIRECT LOADING. It's mainly a NEURAL adaptation not a muscular.

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Rehab / Training Session:

A. BFR Bike-erg - 5:30min @ 2:20 pace, damper 3

• Wrapped BOTH legs here. I had to move the wrap on my right (injured) leg 3–4" lower than where I'd normally use my cuffs simply due to the location of the strain.

• Wrap was a subjective 7/10 tension, minimal pain in the injury site, but got a REALLY strong pump / BFR response from this by the 5min mark -- I'm going to call that success.

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B. Contralateral Circuit - 4 Rounds

1min Ski @ R2 recovery pace

10sec Hand Assist SJ Stance Yielding ISO (injured leg = leg trail leg)

10sec SJ Stance Overcoming ISO (injured leg = lead leg)

• My goal here was to try to reclaim the position of injury as soon as possible and start building confidence / strength in the rec fem with a safe / low-pain isometric. I had a lot of shaking, but no escalation in pain and a definite improvement in gait after this

**note: I added a video of this movement paring

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C. Bilateral + Contralateral Circuit - 4 Rounds

10 Box Squats w/ Chains (18" Bench, up to 105#, with 40# chain)

15sec Hand Supported Low-lunge ISO (injured leg = trail leg)

*deeper knee flex & hip ext, but less overall loading

8 Single-DB Split Squat (injured leg = lead leg)

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D. Finisher:

10 Rounds

45sec Ski w/ BFR @ 7/10 wrap @ 1:49-1:55 by feel

45sec Rest-walk (just focusing on gait)

Overall I saw the biggest reduction in pain levels and improvement in gait so far. I'm pretty optimistic that by Monday of next week I'll be back to normal gait and into Phase-2 adding some controlled eccentrics for the rec-fem.

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