So I got to thinking yesterday, I read somewhere, maybe on this site, that once you rupture one of your AT’s…..the chances of you rupturing the other one goes up significantly. Alright…maybe your are thinking, “Why the heck do you want to talk about tearing your other AT during recovery?”….well, I’m a bit of a perfectionist…and I don’t want this to happen again…apparently, unlike this guy:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/o/oxford_utd/3654558.stm
The discussion topic is: What types of things will you do/change to try and prevent this injury from happening again? Here’s my list so far:
- Never play Basketball, Soccer, Volleyball, Tennis, Raquetball, Squash, Badminton, Football, Ultimate Frisbee again :( Stick to bike riding, golf, and gardening.
- If I do play those sports again, take a few months to slowly get back into “game shape”..do this everytime I take more than a month off of these activities.
- Adequate warm up - 5 minutes of stretching not going to cut it…take 3o-60 minutes to stretch, ride bike, practice, etc before “gametime”
- Daily stretches, isolating the calf/ankle/AT.
- Work strength exercises into routines, isolating calf/lower leg to keep that muscle strong.
- Do nothing…it’s all genetics you goofball!
I also think it’s worth pointing out as we all are progressing nicely in our recoveries, not out of fear, but out of the reality of our situations, that re-rups happen. Although, back to Johnskiers post about survival of the fittest…fear is not necessarily a bad feeling, you don’t necessarily want it to run your life, but having ”fight or flight” is deeply rooted in our hypothalamus….it’s what keeps us from walking in front of that car speeding down the street!
A guy on a forum out of Australia, gathered some re-rup data on the people that were posting and he came up with:
http://www.marfell.me.uk/nuke/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=723
my observations:
1. all the reruptures listed here happened within 5 months of surgery and 82% of them occurred at around 3 months or less.
2. a) out of the 5 reruptures in the conservative group, 3 were just walking, and 2 were doing physio when the 2nd tear occured.
b) out of the 6 reruptures in the surgery group, 4 were falling accidents, while the other 2 were just walking and climbing stairs. furthermore, out of the 4 that were accidents, 2 happened even before they were supposed to bear weight on the tendon.
these are the reported incidents:
conservative treatment / 5 reruptures:
1) at 2.75 months- walking in the street
2) 2.75 months- climbing stairs
3) 3 months- walking on the beach
4) 3.5 months- physio (going on tip toes)
5) 4 months- doing physio
surgical treatment / 6 reruptures:
1) at 3 months- walking in kitchen (toe push off)
2) 3 months- walking up stairs
3) 3.75 months- accident, twisted while stepping in hole in yard
4) 5 months- accident, tripped on curb
5) 2 months- accident, crutches slipped
6) 3 weeks- accident, tripped
Again..not trying to be “Debbie Downer”….just want to get us all fully recovered with no major setbacks. Let’s hear your thoughts
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