 Our next caller is Nick from Ontario. Hey, Nick, how can we help you? Hi, um, first off, I've been listening for a year. You guys are hilarious and I love your show. Just thought I'd say that now get out of the way. Um, I have been having issues with my hamstring ever since they did ACL surgery on my right knee. So they had to take some hamstring tendon to redo the ACL. That would have been five fish years ago. Um, and then anytime I was doing any sort of hip hinging drills, um, I would have more of a stretch on the left side or sorry, I'd have more of a stretch on the left side because the right one was weak. Um, I've pulled it a couple of times when I first had the surgery and one of the physios said that they thought I had a recoil in it, um, which whoever knows what that means. And then it's kind of like, um, manifest into needing hip surgery two years ago, cause it threw off my hips and then my left hip had, um, a impingement. So then that ended up tearing some of the labrum. So yeah, I've had all these little issues and I'm always trying to work on it kind of a little bit of a perfectionist and I just can't get my right hamstring specifically the inside part of my hamstring strong. Um, so yeah, I thought I'd reach out to you guys. Okay. So, uh, little, little context for the listener. So this is a type of ACL repair and there's some pluses and minuses. The pluses are it makes the ACL much more stable. It's actually one of the better ways to cause create stability there, but the cons are the hamstring now is a little different. And so you may find differences in how you hip hinge, um, from one side to the other. Now here's, I want to ask you a couple of questions because you said you hurt your hip, hip afterwards. Uh, are you, are you pushing yourself? Are you trying to consistently add strength? Is this, is there, is there something that you think you're doing that may be contributing to this? So at the time I was actually, uh, on a university level rower, so there was a lot of, um, motion and then a lot of rotation to the right side as well. Um, but again, with that rowing motion, there's a lot of hip hinge in every single stroke. So, okay. All right. So I'm glad you said that because that, that kind of changes things a little bit, um, uh, because after a procedure like that, it can take a long time to make it kind of feel, uh, normal. And if you're at a high level of competition, you kind of don't have time. You need to compete. And if you're a rower, it's very competitive sport. And yeah, there is a lot of posterior chain, right? A lot of hamstring back, uh, biceps, um, involved in, in, in rowing. Um, so that definitely played a role. Now my advice for you, um, would be to focus entirely on unilateral exercises. So everything you do for your hamstrings and your quads, everything you do for your lower body, I would do one leg at a time for a while. So split stance exercises, Bulgarian split stand squats, lunges, step up, single leg deadlifts. Like that's where I would focus. And then I would also focus on, uh, exercising your lateral, uh, stability, both, uh, moving out and in. So exercises that strengthen the muscles that pull the knees together and that pull them apart. Uh, it's going to be real important, uh, for you. I have an exercise that I love. Uh, I think we have it on our YouTube, but, uh, a single leg deadlift where we use a slider, uh, and you're just going to notice if your heel rotates in or out, or if you can keep it nice and stable and locked as you hip hinge back. And just to kind of go through something really slow and methodical, uh, and, and work on it as a corrective type of an exercise would be a great addition. Nick, do you have this option? Are you, are you training for a sport right now? Or are you running in addition? Are you doing anything else? Or can you pretty much program however you want? Um, I mean, we're kind of in lockdown here. So I have my home gym. I have kettlebells, couple dumbbells, TRX, stability ball, um, limited on the weight, but obviously if it's single leg, it should be fine. Uh, but yeah, so I'm pretty much in my basement, so can't really do too much. I love the, the single leg deadlift single leg, even like pistol squats, using your suspension trainer, uh, and the, uh, I was doing that today. So, you know, today we're training legs and I heard a pop in my leg and the, when I were doing heavy lunges with Sal and I instantly went to just all stability focused training. And so, uh, the TRX or suspension trainer is, uh, phenomenal for this because you can just use it to help stabilize you while you really focused on the movement and depth and range of motion for that. So I love the single leg pistol squat with use, using the suspension trainer for support so you can really pay attention to your movement and then I love the, the single leg deadlift for, for your situation that you're in. Okay. And then how would you know when to, I guess phase into traditional, um, lifts again? I would, I would, I would want to see myself progress pretty well in strength before I go back to go test it with bilateral. So I would, whatever your, you know, your strength, by the way, movement is far more important. So the, the, the, how, how well you move is much more important than how much you grab. So in other words, you could maybe right now you're a strong enough guy, you could go grab 80 pound dumbbells and single leg deadlift, maybe, and maybe just cause you can do that. Your movement isn't as pretty when you move 40 pound dumbbell. So start with a weight that you move really, really well and controlled on both sides and then start to wait till you start to see yourself progress there before you go back and retest bilateral. Yeah. And I'll add this use a mirror and when you're when both sides feel equal. Okay. When both sides feel pretty equal in strength, movement, mobility, then it might be a good idea to progress to double leg exercises, but only, only when both sides don't, when there doesn't feel like there's a huge disparity. Do you have a maps prime? Are you priming before your workouts? By the way, I got prime pro and then yeah, I normally do a lot of 90 90 stuff before my workouts and then I have a little bit of a protocol physio has kind of given me, but I'm finding that that one's not working anymore. So okay. Maps prime pros is perfect. So continue working within there. Take the tests within the program. I would look at I'd start at the feet because once you have an imbalance on one side, then moving up and down from that, right? So if it's in the hamstring, then you're going to start to notice issues in the ankle and the hip. And then if it doesn't get fixed and you continue to work out and push yourself, it moves up and down the kinetic chain. So it'll move all the way up to the shoulder even often times. So I would, I would go ankle, foot, then I would look, you're already doing hip. I think that's an obvious one, which is probably why you chose 90 90. I would also look at the upper back and see if there's any differences there. If you've been squatting this whole time with both legs, don't be surprised if you've been compensating as high as your upper back. Maybe an asymmetrical shift. Yeah, it's funny that you guys say that because I do feel like one shoulder is probably a little higher than the other. And there's definitely extra thoracic rotation on one side. And definitely my ankle is not the same on one side versus the other side. You know, so what happens is that as you work up the kinetic chain, it zig zags back and forth. So like the reason why your left hip had issues is because it's the hamstring on the right side. And so then it'll bounce to the opposite side, low back and then upper back. It just kind of how you can, you can follow it like that. And you also said you rode a lot and rotated to the right. So I'm assuming you were on a team and you were on one side and so you were always pulling in one direction. Yeah, for four years. Yeah, okay. So definitely, definitely work on mobility. I would make that a focus. Some of my hardest clients to work with were clients that played a sport that favored one side. I'll never forget. I had a baseball player who pitched for years and years and years with his right arm. And boy, was there a difference in rotation in him because he always trained one side. So, so focus on that. That is going to play a role. That's probably going to play a bigger role than your surgery, believe it or not. I mean, you're trained your body in one direction very intensely for four years, right? So, which is probably longer than it took you to, you know, recover from your ACL surgery. So I would focus on mobility, do unilateral exercises. And I'm going to add one more thing, do unilateral for everything. Okay. Now that we're, you know, it makes more sense now, especially when you consider, you know, you're rowing for four years. I would do everything one side at a time for a long time until things balance out. Okay. I'll stick to the unilateral. I've sprinkled it in here and there, but I've never stuck with it super long because I guess my egos tried to take over to lift those heavy weights. Nick, you will be blown away at your progress. Give it at least six months. You will be blown away at, the first couple of months are going to feel slow and what the heck is going on. After about two months, strength is really going to start to kick in and then you'll start to see some newbie gains, those gains that you got when you first started working out because it's so different and new for your body. So do that for at least six months. All right. Well, I got all the time in the world. So awesome. Thanks for calling, ma'am. Yeah. Thank you guys. No problem. All right. You know, it's funny. They, uh, I remember reading this article where I think it was in England, they were doing some kind of construction job and they had uncovered some remains, uh, some old remains from medieval times and they, they were trying to determine who they were. Yeah. And when they looked at the skeletons, they saw was the long bowman. Yeah. They saw like one arm was the bone was so much thicker. The spine was slightly twisted and there was this huge like discrepancy and then they determined these were long bowmen, which, you know, back in those days, uh, you, I mean, you're pulling that thing required hundreds of pounds of pressure and strength. And that was, I mean, they were the world's number one army because of it. Um, and, and these guys, you could see in their skeletons. Oh yeah. So you train for four years rowing in one direction. Morphs your whole, uh, biology. Absolutely. So you got to balance it out. Otherwise you're going to run into problems.