Breakdown of Après avoir fait de la musculation, ses jambes sont fatiguées et son dos lui fait un peu mal.
Questions & Answers about Après avoir fait de la musculation, ses jambes sont fatiguées et son dos lui fait un peu mal.
In French, when après is followed by a verb, you normally use the past infinitive:
- après + avoir/être + past participle
So you say:
- Après avoir fait de la musculation, … = After having done weight training, …
This shows that the action (doing weight training) is finished before what happens in the main clause.
Forms like:
- ✗ après faire de la musculation
- ✗ après fait de la musculation
are not correct in standard French.
You could also use a full clause:
- Après qu’il a fait de la musculation, …
but then you must add a subject (il, elle, etc.) and conjugate the verb; it’s a different structure.
Musculation is a noun meaning weight training, strength training, or bodybuilding-type exercise (using weights, machines, resistance).
The de la is the partitive article, used with uncountable things, like:
- faire de la musculation – to do some weight training
- faire de la natation – to do (some) swimming
- faire de la danse – to do (some) dancing
It’s de la (not du) because musculation is a feminine noun:
- la musculation → de la musculation
The person is understood from context and from the possessives ses (his/her) and son (his/her):
- Après avoir fait de la musculation, ses jambes sont fatiguées…
Literally: After having done weight training, his/her legs are tired…
Grammatically:
- The subject of the main clause is ses jambes (his/her legs).
- The subject of the après avoir fait clause is assumed to be the same person who owns those legs and that back.
So French doesn’t need an explicit il or elle here; it’s implied by ses / son and by context, just like in English His legs are tired (no “he” as a separate subject there either).
Both patterns exist; they’re just used a bit differently.
- French very often uses the + body part with a pronoun to show whose body part it is:
- Il a mal aux jambes. – His legs hurt.
- Je me lave les mains. – I wash my hands.
Here, though, the sentence is built with the legs as the grammatical subject:
- Ses jambes sont fatiguées. – His/Her legs are tired.
Using ses:
- emphasizes whose legs they are, and
- fits naturally in a simple “possessive + noun + verb + adjective” structure.
You could also say:
- Il a les jambes fatiguées. – Literally: He has the legs tired.
That’s very idiomatic too; it just uses a different structure (with il as subject, not the legs).
Fatiguées is the adjective fatigué (tired) agreeing with jambes:
- jambes is feminine plural → les jambes
- So the adjective must also be feminine plural → fatiguées
Agreement pattern:
- masculine singular: fatigué
- feminine singular: fatiguée
- masculine plural: fatigués
- feminine plural: fatiguées
So:
- Ses jambes sont fatiguées. – The legs (feminine plural) are tired (feminine plural).
fatigué(e)(s) = tired (state)
- Ses jambes sont fatiguées. – Her legs are tired.
fatigant(e)(s) = tiring, exhausting (something that causes fatigue)
- Ce travail est fatigant. – This job is tiring.
If you say:
- Ses jambes sont fatigantes, you’d be saying Her legs are tiring (to her / to others), which sounds strange and not what is meant.
In the original sentence, the idea is that the legs feel tired, so fatiguées is the correct word.
This uses the common expression faire mal à quelqu’un = to hurt someone / to cause pain to someone.
Structure:
- son dos = the subject (the thing causing pain)
- lui = indirect object pronoun meaning to him / to her
- fait = 3rd person singular of faire
- un peu mal = hurts a bit
So literally:
- Son dos lui fait un peu mal.
= His/Her back does a bit of pain to him/her.
→ His/Her back hurts a little.
This structure is very idiomatic and common in French:
- La tête lui fait mal. – His/Her head hurts.
- Les pieds me font mal. – My feet hurt.
They give two different pieces of information:
- son dos tells us which body part is the source of the pain (the back).
- lui tells us who is experiencing that pain (to him/her).
French often keeps both:
- Les dents lui font mal. – His/Her teeth hurt.
- Les yeux me font mal. – My eyes hurt.
Without lui, you’d just be saying “The back hurts” with no person specified:
- Son dos fait un peu mal. – sounds incomplete unless we already clearly know who we’re talking about.
With lui, it’s crystal clear: His/Her back hurts him/her a bit.
In French, possessive adjectives (mon, ton, son, ma, ta, sa, etc.) agree with the gender and number of the possessed noun, not with the owner.
- dos is masculine singular: un dos → le dos
- So you must use masculine singular son → son dos
This is true whether the owner is male or female:
- son dos = his back / her back (context decides)
Similarly:
- ses jambes – his/her legs
because jambes is plural → ses.
Here, mal is used as part of the expression of physical pain:
- avoir mal / faire mal
→ to hurt / to feel pain
To modify how much it hurts, French uses adverbs:
- un peu mal – hurts a bit
- très mal – hurts a lot
- beaucoup mal (colloquial) – hurts a lot
So:
- Son dos lui fait un peu mal. – His/Her back hurts a bit.
Un peu de mal, on the other hand, usually means:
- to have some difficulty / trouble (not physical pain)
- J’ai un peu de mal à comprendre. – I’m having a bit of trouble understanding.
So un peu mal = a little pain;
un peu de mal = a bit of difficulty.
Yes. The two most common patterns are:
Avoir mal à + definite article + body part
- Il a mal au dos. – His back hurts.
- Elle a un peu mal au dos. – Her back hurts a bit.
[Body part] + faire mal à quelqu’un (the one in your sentence)
- Son dos lui fait un peu mal. – His/Her back hurts a bit.
Both are natural. Il a (un peu) mal au dos is slightly more neutral and very frequent in everyday speech.
The tense choice depends on what time frame the speaker has in mind.
- Après avoir fait de la musculation, ses jambes sont fatiguées…
can be:- A description of what typically happens:
→ After doing weight training, his/her legs (always) end up tired and his/her back hurts a bit. - Or a narration set in the present moment:
→ Right now, after today’s workout, the legs are tired and the back hurts a bit.
- A description of what typically happens:
If you were telling a past story, you might instead use a past tense:
- Après avoir fait de la musculation, ses jambes étaient fatiguées et son dos lui faisait un peu mal.
– After doing weight training, his/her legs were tired and his/her back hurt a little.
So the structure with après avoir fait is fine; you just change sont / fait to past forms when you’re narrating past events.