"Training With An Injured Limb" w/ Omar Valdes, M.S. & Luis Penailillo, Ph.D. feat. Christian Espitia-Betancourth, Exercise Physiologist & Iconic Trainer at Discover Strength

On this week's episode of the "Discover Strength Podcast" I had the pleasure of sitting down with some colleagues and researchers from Chile.

Omar Valdes is a student and research assistant at Universidad Finis Terrae in Chile. With the help of his professor Luis Penailillo for his graduate thesis he wrote a wonderful paper that has huge implications for recovery on an injured limb. We've long known that performing exercise on the "non-injured" side of the body, has cross transfer (contralateral) benefits on the opposing immobilized limb. However, in his paper Valdes showed that performing Eccentric only (negative) work with the uninjured limb provided significantly greater cross transfer benefits to the injured side. Decreasing atrophy (and in fact adding some size), as well as maintaining proprioception, and maximum strength output.

The implications of this work are tremendous for any of our clients/listeners who have or will ever suffer an injury that might otherwise keep them from exercising. Not only should you exercise your non-injured limb, you can actually maintain and even see increases in strength in the injured side, following your recovery.

The big takeaway, never let an injury be an excuse to miss your training. Exercising during an injury is just an important, if not more, than exercising when you're totally healthy.

If you're interested in contacting Omar or Luis, they would love to hear from you and you can find their emails below.

Omar Valdes:
ovaldest@uft.edu

Luis Penailillo:
lpenailillo@uft.cl

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