Injury Help!

[Pikehunter]

I damaged a tendon in my left ankle and had surgery in January. The recovery is coming along, but squats and deads are a ways off and I just can't sit and watch my legs melt away anymore. At this point, all I can realistically do is extensions and curls, but those exercises aren't recommended at low rep levels (i.e. below 10).

Can anyone help me? How can I best work my legs when i'm limited in exercise selection and rep range?

Thanks for any help.

 

[Hyper7]

Unfortunately by their very nature, injuries limit how you can exercise. I know it's a difficult time but I tore a rotator cuff and that limited almost every upper body exercise I could do for weeks. At least you CAN do extensions and curls which is better than nothing and should help you continue to develop the legs.
If you can support your body weight you might be able to try single leg squats just using body weight on each leg at a time which is surprisingly challenging to do. I read somewhere that these were good following knee injuries and the like before returning to weighted squats. Hope this helps.

 

[grunt11]

You could try Myo-reps or clustering to get more “bang-for-your-buck” out of the Leg Curls and Extensions.

http://www.yewhealth.com/2010/10/11/myo-reps/

You could also increase the frequency of your leg work since you won’t be working them as heavy.

However, ideally you should be trying to use as much weight as possible if you want to maintain strength. From what I understand you could cut the volume to about 1/3 of what you need to grow for maintenance, but it sounds like volume may be one of the only things you can do more of right now.