Use it or Lose It

[snugtop]

So, a mere three weeks after a knee injury that left me in a leg brace, I have lost 60% of the quad stregth in my left leg...60 percent! I can use a stationary bike but with no weight...this after running a marathon 2 months ago.

 

It's bizarre how fast your body goes. I wish I could gain muscle that fast (or can you?)

[jon]

I had an injury that put me in the hospital for a week and I lost 15 pounds of muscle "mass". The mass you are usually losing though is glycogen which comprises something like 60% of muscle mass, of which 4/5ths of that is water. The loss of strength is typically neuromuscular and comes back quickly unless it is a highly traumatic injury like a hematoma.

[mtn_mouse]

It's bizarre how fast your body goes. I wish I could gain muscle that fast (or can you?)

 

I am just getting over an 8 month knee injury. My physical therapist said I lost 1" of muscle (Circumfrance) during that time. Time to hit the gym again.

 

[snugtop]

Jon, does this mean if I drink a lot of water my muscles will blow back up like a chia pet?

[jon]

No you just have to drink a lot of beer, but you have to make sure to drink enough. Here are some important calculations to consider.

 

A strong 12oz beer will contain 1 oz of alcohol, unless it is Samual Adams Utopia and then you are messing with some serious shit. Your body consumes 4oz of water to metabolize 1oz of alcohol, leaving 7oz of water. Now alcohol is a diaretic so you will piss a couple ounces of that, leaving say 5oz of water. So 5oz of water is available to bind to the sugar in the beer, and since beer is 160 calories per 12oz or so and that weighs approximately 1.4oz, so you store a total of 1.4oz per beer since 4waters bind each molecule of glycogen in muscles. ARE YOU FOLLOWING ME? Ok so if you want chia muscles then in order to gain 10 pounds at 1.25oz each per beer you need to drink 128 beers or about a full keg. GIT TA WERK!

 

Actually I screwed up, it's only 23 beers.

Edited January 6, 2006 by jon

[snugtop]

Ch-Ch-Ch-Chia! I knew it had to be simpler than time & physical therapy. But I hate beer. What's the conversion factor for mixed drinks...say, margaritas?

[DirtyHarry]

I hate beer.

 

You're fucked. You will never get better.

[Kevin_Matlock]

But I hate beer.

 

consider yourself bitch slapped!

[JayB]

I had an injury that sounds like it was pretty similar to yours (MCL tear, etc) a few years ago and experienced atrophy of a similar caliber.

 

I can't recall the precise nature of the rehab I did, but I think it went something like:

 

Range-of-motion stuff ---> 1 leg-workouts on the stationary cycle ---> weightless/extremely low-weight deadlifts, squats, straight-leg deadlifts, and lunges and gradually bumped up the weight and intensity over the course of a couple of months.

 

By that point, when combined with lots and lots of snowboarding in a knee-brace (never really wanted to snowboard but since skiing was out for the season, at least, and I had a season pass, I figured I'd give it a shot) I couldn't see any difference between my two legs, nor could I really feel any, but I'm sure that it was there. I was still aware of the injury for 2-3 years, in the sense that I was a bit more mindful of not injuring it again, and decided to stick to snowboarding as a precaution. Other than a bit of extra pain on extra-long hikes, or approaches/deproaches involving lots of talus, I can't say I've noticed all that much.

 

At the time it seemed like it would take forever to get back to normal, but in hindsight it was just a blip.