Vastus medialis deficiency

I had knee surgery a while back and am having trouble putting muscle back on the vastus medialis on the left side, particularly the area just over the knee. Any suggestions?

If it’s atrophied (as it seems from your post), try straight leg raises. These can be done even at a desk or any time in a chair. Holding your leg out straight pull your toes toward your kneecap, and rotate the whole leg at the hip so your toes point outward at about a 45 degree angle. Hold for a while, then relax. This seems to concentrate the load onto the vastus madialus.

Hey, I had the same problem. I had arthroscopic surgery on my left knee last spring, and I’m just starting to see it return to normal. I would try Ian kings “limping” series. Especially the first month which deals with alot of bodyweight exercises, like step-ups, and partial squats. Be patient though, because its taken me a long time. Honestly what made it worse is that I was squating instead of doing rehab, and my Vastus lateralus got bigger but my VMO didn’t. So don’t squat until your legs are even. If anyone else knows anything PLEASE tell us, although I’ve made progress it seems that its hard to “feel” that muscle sometimes.

Try one and a quarter bench squats and partial range squats concentrating on the bottom half of the lift. You might want to add some additional sets(1-2) for the left side.

Assuming your healthy enough to full squat give them a shake. If you aren’t then re-establish proper knee strength/function before worrying about how it looks. But, assuming you can do full squats do them and if you really want to bring about fast vastus medialis growth try some 1 and a quarter squats. 4-6 sets of 4-8 reps 3 minutes in between sets works pretty good.

Try doing leg extensions an hack squats with the toe pointing outward 45*. Move slowly at first to get the feel for the VM and then increase the tempo to your normal traing speed. Straight leg raises may return VM strength to a degree but they don’t do shit for hypertrophy! Remember, to grow you need a dynamic contraction not an isometric one! Oh yeah one more thing; train unilaterally for awhile to even out your strength and improve your focus.

Before hypertrophy occurs, there’s obviously got to be a certain degree of neuromuscular recruitment happening. If you’re in this phase, I would recommend a couple exercises. Straight leg raises(going fairly heavy but in all 4 directions), terminal knee extensions/short arc quads, and stretching quads hams and it band. What works very well in this stage is PNF. If you have a qualified PT to perform this on you then do it.
After a fair amount of re-education is done, move on to closed chain exercises. These are extremely important because they similate the co-contraction of everyday movements. Minisquats on a smith machine worked great for me (only squat in pain-free range while going fairly heavy). Leg presses should also be done in pain-free ROM. Terminal leg extensions (0-30 deg of flexion) are said to target the VMO more specifically, but I have seen no evidence to support this. The quads work together and must be trained together. Although adding this exercise may help, just don’t have too much faith in it. Be consistent and good luck.