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Asymmetry one year post-injury

fgor

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
I was wondering if others here have experienced this - the more my skiing is improving this season, the more obvious my strength/coordination asymmetry is. I had a significant ankle injury last year (2 months before full weight bearing, ~6 month return to sports). I know that it's totally normal to have a good side and a bad side when turning, but my good side has got better a lot faster than my bad side despite equal practice and I'm starting to think it's because the bad side is just weaker/less coordinated. It's probably about 90% rehabbed with the most noticeable deficiency being reduced dorsi flexion (due to mild joint dysfunction/"pinching feeling", not flexibility/tightness - physio is working on it). This meant I had uneven walking/patterns for quite a long time as I kinda compensated for loss of mobility on one side.

I can't actually max out my ankle dorsiflexion in my ski boots so it shouldn't make a difference, but I still can't push into my boot as easily on that side and I don't have as much control over that leg when turning, so I have much nicer turns to the other direction!

I had a lesson on the weekend and we did work on, how do I explain it, using my legs to turn rather than twisting my upper body as I was doing before, so I now have much better upper/lower body separation :smile: but my leg power/coordination asymmetry has only become more obvious :(

Any other ladies experienced this after lower body injury? Did you do any ski-specific off-snow exercises to even up your legs?
 

marzNC

Angel Diva
Sounds familiar. When I was finishing up knee rehab (non-skiing injury, over 50) and starting to work with a personal trainer, it was very clear that my legs were quite different in terms of strength. In recent years, the difference in flexibility of my hips is even more of a factor for making turns properly. That difference between my two sides doesn't have that much to do with the injury. I'm very right-handed and right-footed. Learning to use my left foot for playing soccer took a while, and that was back in middle school a long time ago.

The better I get as a skier, with the help of lessons from very experienced instructors, the more I'm aware of the difference between my left and right turn. Been taking lessons regularly for seven seasons, both at my home mountain and at destination resorts. Had a private lesson at my home mountain last season where I finally felt what it was like to do a left turn correctly. We worked on very easy green and blue terrain. Still very much a work in progress to make it happen on any type of terrain, especially ungroomed.
 

marzNC

Angel Diva
Did you do any ski-specific off-snow exercises to even up your legs?
During knee rehab, I spent as much time doing exercises with my un-injured leg as my injured one. Later on, I would do more with the weak (left) leg than the strong one. For instance start with the weak leg and end up doing an extra set on that side.

Eventually I started collecting info about fitness related to skiing into a personal blog. Here's an example for adductors and abductors. Can't help with exercises directly related to a bad ankle.

https://over50skifitness.blogspot.com/2017/09/strong-adductor-muscles-are-good-for.html
 

liquidfeet

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
....
I had a lesson on the weekend and we did work on, how do I explain it, using my legs to turn rather than twisting my upper body as I was doing before, so I now have much better upper/lower body separation :smile: but my leg power/coordination asymmetry has only become more obvious :(

Any other ladies experienced this after lower body injury? Did you do any ski-specific off-snow exercises to even up your legs?

Yes, turning your legs but not your upper body/shoulders is very important skill. Congrats on getting that to work!

Everyone has a strong side and a weak side in skiing. Yours may be exaggerated because of the injury, but at least you're not alone. Do you walk or run for exercise? If you do, you can simply work on feeling the injured ankle opening and closing with muscle power as you walk/run. In other words, build a stronger connection between your mental awareness and your foot movements. Or put another way, increase your ankle-brain connections. The long word for this is proprioception. You'll be working on building proprioception for your injured ankle, and once that neural network is stronger, you'll be able to monitor better what you're doing with that foot when it's in a ski boot and you're skiing. You'll need to know what's happening down there if you're going to change it on the hill.

I've found that building more precise proprioception throughout my legs while running in the green season has helped immensely when I get back on snow. Also, paying continuous attention to what I do with my left hand as I run allowed me to eliminate the very bad habit of dropping that hand when skiing. That was the first one of my many bad habits that I attacked successfully in the summer so it was gone in the winter.

Training for proprioception doesn't get enough attention, IMO.
 
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fgor

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Thanks so much! That all makes sense. Yeah, at this point the ankle itself has had enough rehab that it's stable and my physio work is all about getting rid of the flexion impingement (gained 2cm of dorsiflexion after physio manipulation + ultrasound this morning - shame it will probably just stiffen back up again over the day!!), but that whole side still doesn't seem to be as good as it was. Those adductor exercises look really useful, I can imagine those muscles would play a large role in skiing especially with the focus on turning with the legs, not the upper body!

I walk a little bit sometimes but I'm always very much on autopilot - I like the idea of focusing on proprioception too. I guess that's the feeling of not being so coordinated/in control of those muscles - suboptimal proprioception. That's really cool you've been able to make improvements in your skiing habits by focusing on proprioception over the summer months!
 

MilkyWookiee

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
I'm extremely unbalanced as well due to a skeletal deformity in my hip. The best advice I can give came from my horseback riding trainer when I was a teen, and it is to communicate your injury to EVERY coach/trainer/instructor etc. I've had some (mostly group fitness instructors) that could care less and think I'm making excuses. I've had others (mostly ski instructors) be extremely grateful for the insight and the opportunity to help me as best as possible.

I've also noticed that the imbalance was most pronounced when I was a beginner, and became an issue again as I've started skiing more aggressively and focusing on technique.

Some good exercises I do to start every ski day are turns on one foot and stopping both ways, then throughout my day I try to only stop on my bad side. I'll also practice only turning my bad way down some wide flat runs. Plus stretching beforehand! I stretch barefoot, in my boots, and even on my skis depending on how my day is going
 

marzNC

Angel Diva
Working on a few machines to day at the fitness center, I was reminded how asymetric I am for arm strength too. Also for lower body flexibility. That definitely plays a role in making it harder to make left and right turns in the same way.
 

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