Thirteen Below
Cheesehead
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The word has come down on Christian Watson's injury. As you may recall, Watson has been undergoing evaluation and treatment of his ongoing hamstring injuries at the University of Wisconsin Madison since January, trying to determine what was making him so prone to them and whether anything could be done to make him less susceptible.
Friday, it was revealed that one of the first things doctors learned was that there was a 22% differential in the muscle mass in his right leg and his left leg. That's really quite a lot, because the the normal discrepancy is well below 10%.
I'm guessing this may have been what Watson's father was referring to when he leaked a couple of months ago that they'd found something very significant that was correctable, and that those close to him were very confident it would make a difference.
Bottom line is, the muscles in the weaker leg have to try to work 22% harder to keep up with the other leg when both legs are trying to go the same speed. That's a lot of extra stress being forced on the weaker leg when it is already being pushed to the max as he sprints downfield. And while I am certainly no doctor, I can easily imagine that it would put some very uneven loads on the stronger leg, as it struggles to adjust to the weaker one.
Shortly after Watson's visit to UW, which in 2021 was given a $4 million grant by the NFL to study the prevention and treatment of hamstring injuries, he had a 20% difference in muscle mass between his right and left legs. Now, he says it's between 8% and 10%.
"I was obviously a little bit down in my right leg [compared] to the left," Watson said. "One, it puts strain on the left side, and the left is going through a lot more. And then two, obviously when you're trying to be equal in power, it obviously puts a lot more stress on the one that's not as strong. So that's been the No. 1 thing for me because that leads to fatigue as well. It's a bad place to be, so obviously that's been my No. 1 goal to just kind of eliminate that."
www.espn.com
He further said that his goal is to get that disparity down from 8-10% to something less than 6%, in order to minimize as much as possible the different levels of force being applied to each of the two legs.
So I guess we will have to see. This does sound promising; time will tell, and all we can do is wait and see how it works out. I'm no expert on this, but I did a half hour of googling after I read this, and found that there are a lot of studies out there recently that suggest a pretty strong link between extreme differences in muscle mass and a likelihood of hamstring issues. So there may really be something to this.
Edited to add: I also can't help wondering if Stokes has a similar story, and that may be why we are suddenly hearing so many things about how much better he looks this spring and how confident the team suddenly is in him.
Lafleur certainly seems to be chortling just under his breath and smirking to himself when he speaks of Stokes. Could be a patented Packer smoke screen, or could maybe also be that he really does have reason to believe Stokes has taken a big step forward medically. If it's the latter (and it turns out to be warranted), our secondary could look much better in 2024 than we realized.
Friday, it was revealed that one of the first things doctors learned was that there was a 22% differential in the muscle mass in his right leg and his left leg. That's really quite a lot, because the the normal discrepancy is well below 10%.
I'm guessing this may have been what Watson's father was referring to when he leaked a couple of months ago that they'd found something very significant that was correctable, and that those close to him were very confident it would make a difference.
Bottom line is, the muscles in the weaker leg have to try to work 22% harder to keep up with the other leg when both legs are trying to go the same speed. That's a lot of extra stress being forced on the weaker leg when it is already being pushed to the max as he sprints downfield. And while I am certainly no doctor, I can easily imagine that it would put some very uneven loads on the stronger leg, as it struggles to adjust to the weaker one.
Shortly after Watson's visit to UW, which in 2021 was given a $4 million grant by the NFL to study the prevention and treatment of hamstring injuries, he had a 20% difference in muscle mass between his right and left legs. Now, he says it's between 8% and 10%.
"I was obviously a little bit down in my right leg [compared] to the left," Watson said. "One, it puts strain on the left side, and the left is going through a lot more. And then two, obviously when you're trying to be equal in power, it obviously puts a lot more stress on the one that's not as strong. So that's been the No. 1 thing for me because that leads to fatigue as well. It's a bad place to be, so obviously that's been my No. 1 goal to just kind of eliminate that."
![www.espn.com](/proxy.php?image=https%3A%2F%2Fa3.espncdn.com%2Fcombiner%2Fi%3Fimg%3D%252Fphoto%252F2024%252F0523%252Fr1336700_1296x729_16%252D9.jpg&hash=cf4ce996b665a814bff9600d04233ff1&return_error=1)
How Packers' Christian Watson is solving his nagging hamstring issues
Offseason testing found the root cause, and the Packers hope Watson will stay healthy and up his game in 2024.
He further said that his goal is to get that disparity down from 8-10% to something less than 6%, in order to minimize as much as possible the different levels of force being applied to each of the two legs.
So I guess we will have to see. This does sound promising; time will tell, and all we can do is wait and see how it works out. I'm no expert on this, but I did a half hour of googling after I read this, and found that there are a lot of studies out there recently that suggest a pretty strong link between extreme differences in muscle mass and a likelihood of hamstring issues. So there may really be something to this.
Edited to add: I also can't help wondering if Stokes has a similar story, and that may be why we are suddenly hearing so many things about how much better he looks this spring and how confident the team suddenly is in him.
Lafleur certainly seems to be chortling just under his breath and smirking to himself when he speaks of Stokes. Could be a patented Packer smoke screen, or could maybe also be that he really does have reason to believe Stokes has taken a big step forward medically. If it's the latter (and it turns out to be warranted), our secondary could look much better in 2024 than we realized.
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