Posts Tagged ‘sports injury’

As you know from the last couple of posts I am half way through recovery from a rotator cuff tendon tear.

As a consequence of this injury my upper body strength training has decreased in volume substantially.

For 3 months I did not raise my left arm above shoulder height at all. I now have a 15% decrease in range of motion when extending the arm over head.

I expect that to mend fast once I am able to do bar hangs and pull ups again but that is 3-4 months away.

So its time to refocus my training so I can remain very fit & active but not aggravate my shoulder.

My plan is to greatly increase my cardio training while I have the opportunity. This will be a 4-5 month program after which I should be back to my normal routine.

Of course if I reinjure the shoulder I am screwed.

So I want to do 90 minutes cardio per day. I want to do 80% light easy cardio & 20% intense HIIT per week.

Thats 4 days easy cardio & 2 days HIIT & strength style.

I also want to ramp up my sauna time.

Cardio will be in the form of skipping (if I can do it – have not tested the shoulder yet), cycling, KB swings and rebounder.

I may do some easy barefoot grass runs too.

HIIT will largely be Kettlebell and Clubbell work & other calisthenics stuff.

OK thats fairly standard training with a cardio focus. I will also ramp up my flexibility training. Isometrics etc.

Now what will be different is an introduction of preventative rehabilitation training.

I touted this in a post many months ago. Using medical & physiotherapy rehabilitaion research & programs to take your body to a whole new level of fitness.

Well I posted but did not do – now months later have two torn tendons.

Now I must take my own advice.

I have done rehab on the shoulders for 3 months now with a physiotherapists guidance.

Here are the main area’s I want to focus on:

1. Detoxification – This is the first step & I did my major detox a year back. I simply need to make long duration sauna more frequent.

2. Joint specific preventative rehabilitation.

– Shoulders
– Knees
– Hip / Pelvis
– core / lower back

These are the main points of joint failure. I simply intend to train using the full rehabilitation protocols for people that have injured these joints.
Hence avoiding future injury. This will include an over all strategy for tendon strengthening most probably involving isometrics.

3. Cardio pulmonary rehabilitation

4. Grip training – I already have a good grip & train it regularly but it should be included by everybody.

So what I am planning to do here is pre-empt & prevent injury by giving my body a conditioning buffer.

I’m 48.5 years old not the 28 year old infantryman I once was. Not the 35 year old stallion any more. But in my psyche I still am young & virile.

I also know how to supplement & self medicate to rev up my hormone levels & that should definitely be done with the above regimen.

So for a senior athlete these extra injury prevention measures are required if you want to retain stallion status.

Lets face it most of us are negligent and wont take the required safety measures.

I say alter your training and fit in the rehab protocols BEFORE you get injured. Because a 9 month lay off with a torn tendon really does suck.

***WARNING***

One warning about isometrics & joint strength. Isometrics really hit the tendons & are magnificent for strengthening the tendon structure. BUT if you do your isometrics in positions that compromise your joints you will suffer joint & tendon failure.

For some time I was doing isometrics in an overhead press position. This is actually contradictory to rotator cuff anatomy as it is an impingement position. Did this contribute to my injury? I think it probably did & I had no idea what I was doing at the time.

This means isometrics must not simply mimic positions held in certain exercises.

Isometrics must be designed around the functional anatomy of the joint & copied from physiotherapy rehabilitation programs. Then you are safe.

Do not do haphazard, random isometric holds. Do not simply copy muscle building exercises to determine your isometrics positions.

In my 32 year training history I have only had two serious injuries. The first was whiplash back in my army reserve days. Primarily this was caused by using a neck harness and doing 200 reps with 80lbs in the forward position only.

After a few months of doing this strength stunt a guy in the army put me into a headlock while wrestling. A few days later my neck was screwed. I went to a chiropractor and got an x-ray. My neck was straight like a broom stick.

It actually took me 5 years to get it fully pain free with no further recurrences.

Now I have torn two tendons in my rotator cuff on the left shoulder. As I often make money painting this is very not good and I have never had any shoulder problems prior to this at all.

Main culprit for this injury – very heavy weight vest training. The main problem is putting the thing on but I’m sure the duration of my sessions has not helped.

I have now done 3 months of physio and am about 60% healed up. But this is a debilitating injury and I need 100% repair. My next step is. Platelet Injection.

Fingers crossed that PRP treatment will get me over the recovery line.

Even Evander Holyfield & Vitali Klitschko had a torn rotator cuff & Vitali Klitschko boxed professionally for a further 13 years after rotator cuff repair.

Here is a great video on Rotator Cuff recovery:

Hey why not look at Military training to learn a few things about our physical limits. Lets take a look at some Special Forces training and figure out the weakest links in our bodies so we can build the strongest possible foundation for excellence.

Factoid: The most common injury on the battlefield is concussion

From Will Brinks blog:

“This study revealed that physical training caused 50% of all injuries, and 30% were linked to running. Injuries resulted in 10-times the number of profile days (lost work days) as illnesses with the leading reason for outpatient visits in our Group was for musculoskeletal disorders.

It was interesting to note that in other army units studied, musculoskeletal injuries are more common in the lower extremities (e.g., knees and ankles) but in SF, upper extremity injuries (e.g., lower back, upper back, shoulders, etc) are more common. The authors theorized “This may be due to the slightly older average age of our Soldiers versus conventional units, in addition to the cumulative effect of repetitive micro trauma from airborne operations, combatives training, wearing heavy body armor, and carrying heavy loads.”

Aside: I can tell you right now as an ex Infantry Soldier – Its from wearing a very heavy pack which is put on and off all day long – for training purposes you are better off wearing a weight vest.

Stew Smith says “Pain is not an injury” –> LOL neither is a scab if you’re hungry I guess.

But Stew is not a dummy, From his site…

The most common of knee injuries is Patello-Femoral Pain Syndrome (PFPS) or commonly called “runner’s knee.”(link http://www.drpribut.com/sports/spknees.html) and Iliotibial Band (ITB) (link http://www.drpribut.com/sports/spitb.html) For most people these injuries are classified in the “over-use injury” category.

Usually, if your knee injury involves ligaments or cartilage, surgery is required and can be relatively quick with a speedy recovery thanks to the latest in arthroscopic surgery techniques.

Stew also says, the lower back is the most common injury area and you should always balance core exercises with lower back exercises like hyper extensions, flutter kicks, etc.

And more from Stew on pain:

Many graduates of these SO programs were athletes in high school or college and know the difference between injury and pain. Sports, martial arts, tough training workouts, and life in general can help you know what the difference is. But mainly graduates can suck it up when they need to and “tape it up and play” if required. This is where they say that SEAL Training is 90% mental. It is not academic mental – but mentally challenging because you have to deal with pain and discomfort on a daily basis.

Aside: In war – you can’t take a crap.

Factoid: Lateral ankle sprains are the most common injury in all of sports, and are examined in the emergency room more than 500,000 times per year. They are typically classified into one of three grades that indicate the level of damage done to the supporting ligaments.

Factoid: The most common injury for female basic trainees is femoral head and hip fractures … This not just for Special Forces, but for infantry in general.

So basically what do you get out of that information ?

Here’s what I get. Most of us train in two ways. “Muscle Group Training” or “Exercise Regimen Training”. Neither of these would be classed as functional training. Athletes of all walks are guilty of this training trap.

Let me explain. Lets say you are a body builder. They are avid “Muscle Group” trainers

Chest
Arms
Back
Upper Legs
Lower Legs

And subdivisions of the above – then exercises are chosen to match these specific muscle groups or body parts and a training program is designed around that. The system works in many respects and almost all of us follow this system in some way. Many athletes in other sports will still train in this way but just skewed to their sport.

Next up is “Exercise Regimen Training”

Power lifters for example train…

Bench Press
Dead lift
Squat

Then they select sub exercises to support that regimen. Swimmers train a swimming regimen, runners a running regimen. The list is a long one. Probably more athletes train an “Exercise Regimen” system than “Muscle Group” although there some overlap.

Again I too am guilty of this and enjoy my sports.

OK so what happens when you get all of these fit people and stick them in the military ?

They break.

Military selection is designed to find weakness – and they will find it. Why?

Because people do not train functionally. We don’t set out to build our anatomical foundation. Physiological foundation yes, most athletes are masters of aerobic and or anaerobic fitness.

Where we are failing is our anatomy – our joint system.

How about “Joint Centric Training” ?

This is a third paradigm in fitness training.

How about breaking it down to strengthen & condition the weak links in your anatomy…

Neck
Spine
Lower Back
Shoulders
Elbows
Wrists
Hips
Knees
Ankles

It doesn’t sound like sports does it ? No – it sounds more like physiotherapy. Stop and take a look at how the Special Forces guys break. Its not because they are not fit or strong, its because they did not strengthen their joints.

I’m 44 this week and hitting andropause has made me pay attention – these same injuries hit the elderly. Masters athletes are an oddity because we don’t train in this way. Most older athletes will never build this anatomical core. Many will hit a serious injury and that’s it – end of career.

So the bottom line is that an aspect of your training should be “Joint Centric” to build a foundation of “Anatomical Fitness” – just as you do Aerobic & Anaerobic training to build a foundation of “Physiological Fitness”.

Also “Joint Centric” does not mean Yoga & stretching. There is much more to it than that including special massage & strength training as well as stretching.

Adding this regimen will take you to a new level of physical capability that most of us have neglected – quite by accident.

Finally: here is a post on strength coach.com along the same lines

http://www.strengthcoach.com/public/1282.cfm