Hey guys,
I broke my tibia, fibula and shattered my heel about 2 months ago. I am almost to the point where I can put weight on my leg again without feeling like I’m gonna collapse. What I’m more worried about is how my body will react when I get back into powerlifting. I’ve been maintaining as much as possible on my bench but squats/deads have been out of the question. My question is does anyone have any experience with a similar injury and how soon can I expect my numbers with pulling and squatting to get back to a somewhat normal level? Oh and I now have a rod running from my ankle to my knee, which I’m sure will also give me some trouble as far as mobility goes in the beginning.
Any help/advice is appreciated. Thanks
I broke my fibula and the joint slid apart. No damage to heel. Deads came back very fast… in fact I pulled 315 or so the day the cast came off. Squats took a lot longer. Did a lot of box squats because ankle mobility was bad. Hammered the rehab exercises and SQ/DL to the limits of pain. Ortho said the joint was fine and just to let pain be my guide.
Had some real bad back pain as a result of imbalances due to the injury and not knowing enough about soft tissue work and mobility. Squat was back inside of a year, maybe? It still hurts every once and a while and sometimes very badly for days at a time (this is 4 years later or so), but only walking around. Squatting and pulling never really hurt.
I am now stronger than ever so it hasn’t held me back at all. Had like a 480-ish dead and low 400 squat before the break and now I’m up to 635 dead and 585 squat. Just be aware of your body and be intelligent when building things back up. No problem!
I just experienced a severe compound fracture in my big toe last week to the point that my toe was barely hanging on and bone fragments were sticking out. I can’t give you advice on what to experience and a toe and an entire leg are two completely different things but I am going to give you an idea to what I have planned FOR ME.
Since I am on crunches and not using my leg I am doing
2-3 weeks post injury - unilateral isolation movements for quads, hams, and routes to keep strength in the individual muscles and work on any possible developing strength difference between the two
Weeks 3-4 - unilateral isolation movements still but add in some compound unilateral movements such as single-leg leg presses andsingle-leg hyper extensions
Weeks 5-6 - focus on free weight unilateral compound movements to work on muscle coordination and make sure everything is firing
Weeks 7 and on - add in regular lifts and keep unilateral exercises as needed to work on differences between the two legs
Over complicated? Maybe. But it makes sense in my head and it seems to be a logical order of addressing my problems as I go as well aswell as allowing me to push myself without worry about putting ttoo much stress on my foot before my bones are healed.