Big left leg, small right leg. Muscle imbalance

Hi guys,

I hurt my right knee when i was 17 and i went to a physio at the time and she pointed out there sizeable muscle imbalance. I can see the difference when I look at then even while sitting down wearing jeans.

More specifically the hamstring/quad is smaller on my right left by a noticable margin. I also have less stability on this side when I stand on one leg. I tend to wobble about more.

So for the last 10 years I’ve tried various things to improve the situation. I constantly pull hamstring on this side. Even stretching my legs or doing yoga can make it pull. A slow jog on the beach also makes it pull -.-

No problems when swimming or running.

So this winter I want to try fix things, Intending to make some effort to increase the strength in my hip stabilizing muscles by doing some planks and other exercises.

I would also like to be able to monitor what kind of effort I am putting through each leg while I am on the turbo trainer.

Can anybody recommend a device that can track the stroke/effort you put through each leg?

Many Thanks,
-Cake

Sorry, I can’t answer your questions, but I have one for you - did you by any chance play basketball in High School?

No i played a lot of football when i was young and was pretty awesome at it, when i was 16 i was playing on 4 teams, school u16 & u18, my cities u18 team and cities mens team until i got injured. Never been the same since. I was a natural runner used to cover more ground on the pitch than the other players by a good distance.

So there are no devices that monitor the amount of energy per leg? Or give a break down say percentage wise which legs are doing the most say 60% left 40% right so i can monitor it.

I think it need to spend the winter retraining myself to stop carrying my bed leg and get it working again.

Please help guys if you got some insight.

-Cake

Computrainer shows balance between legs on screen in percentages I think. Also i can’t believe I am saying this…you all know what is coming…might want to look into power cranks to help with your muscle imbalance. THERE!!! I said it ;0)

i broke my ankle so severely while playing soccer that it required two surgeries.
needless to say when the cast came off one leg was much smaller than the other.
i eased back into my run routine and started gaining some muscle back, but could never get it quite even with the other one.
i started doing individual leg workouts and calf raises, this helped more.
to this day (two years after) my legs are still not equal in size or strength.

my local tri-club back in Kentucky had some powercranks that i tried and it actually did seem to help.
short answer: powercranks maybe?

note: i do not own powercranks or train on them. just trying to help the OP out.

You may want to go to a doctor to ask about getting an EMG test to see if there is a neurological reason for the discrepancy.