Basics! Improving leg strength...
Over the past few months (even years tbh) there has been a clear pattern emerging from friends/training partners who have had hip replacements – they are all almost ex-military with a keenness to compete in some form of martial arts. Given that my current predicament is very similar when a friend asked me how he could build leg muscles without exposing his hips – I was happy to help as it’s something I may need to engage myself in years to come.
I sat down for some time contemplating what he could do (as could I in the future) and I was constantly thinking of extravagant things, fancy stuff! I even put out a tweet to see if anyone could come up with or even point me towards really cool looking exercises that would suit his needs – funnily enough the only tweets I received (and a few messages) all said the same things, back to basics. This helped me learn 2 things – firstly never overlook the basic exercises that almost everyone knows (well anyone that has spent almost any amount of time in the gym) and secondly, fancy/cool stuff isn’t always best (in fact you could argue it rarely is).
I’ve ended up with quite a small amount of exercises for him – but they will work with the correct loading and rep range. Leg extensions, Leg curls (seated), Standing weighted calf raises & Leg press. I have even looked at weighted step ups and feel if the height of the step up isn’t to high it should be OK to reduce the strain on the hips.
So although this blog doesn’t really tell you much of anything today – in fact YES it does. Don’t over complicate things, don’t try to make yourself look smarter or more advance… use the basic knowledge you have gained (in what ever it is you do) and build on that over time. I think it is fair to say that today it was a case (yet again in all honesty) of lesson learnt.