On Weight Lifting Before Surgery: Assayag & Birkholtz

I chatted with both of these Doctors recently. Both doctors had different opinions than LimbLengtheningForum's common thought.

LL Forum: Before surgery, stop doing lower body lifts altogether. Lifting => Hypertrophy => more muscle to stretch => more pain. Stick to stretching and running.

Assayag: Firmly disagrees with forum's common thought. Make legs / glutes strong, keep on lifting. Just make sure you stay flexible.

Birkholtz: Lifting is fine, but prefers activities such as jiu jitsu that maintains limberness.

My current thinking: Keep doing bjj, do lots of zercher squats (really opens up the hips and focuses on strengthening the glutes), all the while maintaining and improving flexibility. What's your take?


PS: I'm looking at an early March date, will either be at Assayag's or Birkholtz's practice at that point (depends on HP's availability, really). Definitely reach out if you have experience with either or will have intersecting timelines with me!

You will have atrophy whether you lift or don’t lift. Better to come in strong, tightness doesn’t start until around 3-5cm for most people

Gotcha. And from what I've read about muscles to strengthen, people recommend getting great at dips and strengthening glutes.

As an aside, from seeing the atrophy on LL patient videos, man... seeing my legs become as small as my forearms is going to throw me for a total loop. Masculinity ego meltdown. C'est la vie.

Purely an anecdote, but I didn't stop lifting before I did the surgery. My pain levels were crazy high for the month after initial surgery. However, I recovered well and kept my flexibility.

It's hard to say whether my pain levels were high because I was lifting the week before surgery or if it was just because my legs were beefy.

Realistically, you're not going to gain any significant amount of muscle in a short time period anyways so I would imagine it doesn't really matter that much if it's the muscle mass itself that leads to a tougher time with distraction.