First of all congrats @ LegendKiller on finishing your lengthening phase.
Going from 172 cm to 182,5 cm is very much impressive at the same time insane.
It would require a lot of patience, determination, and suffering to lengthen 10,5 cm
I have few questions:
- What was your tibia to femur ratio before?
- After 3cm, at what rate were you lengthening?
- How many times and for how long were you doing physiotherapy/stretching per day?
- Weren't you afraid that your athletic ability would deteriorate if you lengthen too much?
- How are your proportions looking now? Especially when you sit on a chair, does the femur comes out too far?
Any tips for me, I am currently too in the lengthening phase.
First of all, thank you very much my friend. Indeed it did require a load of patience, dedication and pain tolerance, def. the hardest time of my life and even though I know what pain and dedication feels like from bodybuilding for so long, i still haven´t experienced anything like that yet. God knows I cried like a bitch a few times and my Girl had to lift me up. completely honest here.
To answer your questions:
1. My femurs were very short compared to my tibias. According to betz it was close to 90% ratio which is pretty uncommon and made me more confident in being able to lengthen 10cm without it really looking stupid (of course it does now look a little bit funky because the muscle isn´t back yet but that will subside once i´m able to put the muscle back on)
2. I lengthened at a rate of 1mm per day, normally betz patients from that point on scale back to 0,75mm per day but I stayed at 1mm until like 6cm, at that point to be completely honest I could not take the pain and discomfort anymore and also scaled back to 0,75mm per day. Looking back I don´t recommend doing it my way and going a little slower from 3cm on but in the end its also a decision by feel, my body told me to keep going until it told me to fk off and then I listened and scaled back.
3. I did a lot fo stretching from the beginning, 3-4 times a day mainly adductors, quads and hams, when I was released from the hospital I had one more week off and then immediately started working 9 hours again 5 days a week, which surely isn´t optimal. This also made it difficult to do enough PT, which I kinda slacked on for the most part of lengthening, but to be honest during lengthning days itself were so hard that I would not have been able to do 1-2 hours a day of PT anyway, the tension and discomfort for me personally was just to much. I also got covid in may which did not help my situation either.
4. Honestly I didn´t think much about that. For me it was mainly about gaining a lot of height, I know that every person on here has a different opinion regarding athletic ability and how much of it you can gain back, for me personally I´m confident that with training and time I can get back to a point where I am still pretty athletic despite the amount I lengthened. of course soft tissue is weak now and will be for quite some time but I don´t know why people think it can NEVER get back to normal or even better. pretty much everything in our body can adapt over time depending on your training and the work you put in. Thats my take on it. I´m not expert but when it comes to training, I know a thing or two. After all you are stretching the soft tissue but you (if everything goes right) are not DAMAGING it, which is a big difference.
5. I think my proportions still are very good. Now bare in mind, I lost a lot of muscle up top, I completely lost my ass and my Quad muscle, its natural that RIGHT NOW I look kinda funny. Skinny with really long quads and no muscle. But you have to keep in mind the bigger picture here. For me its all about what I will look like once the muscle is back which has a lot to do with "looking right" and proportions.
Of course my femur looks pretty long right now when sitting down but it also does that in people with naturally long femurs so Im completely okay with that.
Hope that helped a little bit. What doctor did you do the surgery with and what method? How much have you lengthened yet?
My best advice would be to be prepared for everything, you will have days that are fine and other days you´ll regret everything. Just keep in mind why you want to be taller. This is kind of a rollercoaster ride so just stay on top of stretching and PT and take it day by day.
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Topic: Femur-Lengthing with Dr. Betz March 2021 (Read 1565 times)