Have you ever trained any bodybuilders or athletes with a structural(bone) leg length discrepancy? If so, did you keep squats and deadlifts or did you ditch them? If they wore a lift for their shorter leg, did you allow squats and deadlifts?
After 6 years of training and never noticing it before I recently found that my left leg is 8 millimeters shorter than my right. My right leg is slightly more hypertrophied (and tighter right hip) as a result due to being the longer leg and taking more of the load during bilateral exercises over the years.
If you have had athletes like this before, are there any modifications you made for their lower body training?
I have the same problem. Right leg is almost a half inch shorter and my right foot rolls inside when I walk/run. Have to have special orthopedics. Got it when my leg was broke during birth.
Interested to hear his comments. I have always been shy squatting heavy.
My left leg is 11mm shorter than the left one and my wife’s is 8mm shorter.
I obviously still squat and deadlift. I did start wearing a lift in the left shoe when I learned that my leg was shorter, my wife has orthotics.
What I noticed is that when doing a lot of squatting/deadlifting/olympic lifts with a shorter leg it can lead to technique issues and eventually bad motor patterns. So I wouldn’t do these lifts without wearing orthotics and then paying A LOT of attention to technique. If your leg has been shorter for a while and you never had orthotics you developed some modified body mechanics and it might make it harder to use proper technique on the big lower body lifts. It can be done but technique before load, always.
However make sure that the reason for the shorter leg is structural, sometimes it could be a misalignement, rotated pelvis or muscle imbalances.
Unfortunately, it’s a structural LLD. I went through a ton of ART and soft tissue work as well as chiropractic adjustments and it didn’t fix it so we got x-rays and it’s the bones. It seems to be the whole leg, and not just the tibia or the femur.
CT,
When you squat and deadlift wearing a lift, do you position your stance or feet any differently?
Do you use orthotics too or just a lift? Did your wife have to see an orthopedic doctor to get orthotics?
When you use a lift, is it just a heel lift or a lift for the whole foot?
I tried using a heel lift that doesn’t compress under load and I like that I finally feel both legs working evenly at lockout, but found that my right foot tends to point just a couple degrees further out than my left foot. I think that the extra degrees on my right allow my right knee to trek slightly further out than my left.
[quote]mmar455 wrote:
Unfortunately, it’s a structural LLD. I went through a ton of ART and soft tissue work as well as chiropractic adjustments and it didn’t fix it so we got x-rays and it’s the bones. It seems to be the whole leg, and not just the tibia or the femur.
CT,
When you squat and deadlift wearing a lift, do you position your stance or feet any differently?
Do you use orthotics too or just a lift? Did your wife have to see an orthopedic doctor to get orthotics?
When you use a lift, is it just a heel lift or a lift for the whole foot?
I tried using a heel lift that doesn’t compress under load and I like that I finally feel both legs working evenly at lockout, but found that my right foot tends to point just a couple degrees further out than my left foot. I think that the extra degrees on my right allow my right knee to trek slightly further out than my left.
Thanks for your insight CT.
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No, it felt odd at first. I filmed myself to make sure that my technique was solid because it did feel odd.
Me just a lift, my wife has orthotics that were designed and prescribed by a podiatrist… that is the way to go IMHO
Just the heel… but honestly it’s not a great idea… you need something that you wear 24/7 to develop the musculature in balance otherwise your lifting will never be optimal… you cannot unlearn compensatory mechanisms by training in a lift 7 hours a week and stand/walk 70-100 hours a week without them (thus going back to your old compensatory mechanisms).