please help vmo

parth_0016

hy readers,
i had my injury about 2 years ago. while playing football my friend hit my knee and it twisted inside.there was a sharp pain while bending only-i went to the doctor and he said that it was a mcl small tear.he out me in two weeks cast and told me no excercises.
because of that im suffering, my vmo is totally weak though there are small contractions.
i cant stop easily while running.i ahve a feeling that i shoulnt have been put in the cast.i dont know if there was an mcl injury in the first case. i do all excercises but only the top part of the quariceps strenthen.i have got bad physiotherapists.coz i read one blog the person said to strentgen vmo do top 15 degress in leg extension,my physio made me do full lenght without any emphasis on top 15 degress.what should i do my top muscles take over and vmo is still very weak.

sward29

I have a weak VMO and find the best exercise is one legged partial squats using the stairs or a box. I tried the usual straight leg raises and leg extensions over the last 15 degrees of leg extension but a physio I went to said that you really need to recruit the glutes as well to improve knee stability, which is what the vmo provides.

I do them by standing on the bottom stair facing the wall. Holding onto the bannister or the wall itself for support, stand on the injured leg and drop slowly until the knee is flexed around 30 degrees. Hold for a couple of seconds and return slowly to the starting position. Repeat as many times as you can and you'll soon feel a burn in the vmo. Make sure that you keep your weight through the whole of your foot and not on your forefoot as this helps to recruit the glutes more effectively.

I get knee pain going up stairs if I've not ridden my bike for a week or so but a few sets of these soon gets my kneecap tracking properly.

deal

parth_0016 wrote:

i have got bad physiotherapists.

sounds like the solution is to get a better one.

yakk

Hi there, good luck with getting back to full fitness. Just to say that you cannot selectively recruit VMO over the rest of the quads, it is impossible. In the last 15 degrees of terminal knee extension all the quads work, not just VMO.
Best advice is to strengthen your quads by gradually increasing the weight/resistance of your exercise until it feels like your good leg (test your good leg doing the exercise to compare). keep increasing the weight/resistance until you get the required strength, gradually getting back into your running.
If you have specific problems stopping, then practice that until you get better at it.
All this assumes that your original injury has settled.
All the best.
Yak

Spender1330

Sounds like you might have a better physio than you thought. It is old-school to say that the VMO works mainly in the last 15 degrees - like Yak said all the quads work there - but there is now loads of evidence that VMO works from 90 through to zero. How to get your VMO bulk to increase has a long history of rumours and personal preferences.

Not being able to stop running can be an ACL problem - has someone checked that for you??

Spender
A Physio

garetjax

A useful read:

http://www.tmuscle.com/free_online_arti ... f_knees&cr