Exercise After Injuries
It's very common to exercise after you've had an injury. We are often asked what types of activities can be done after an injury. The first thing you must address is the severity of the injury. If you are dealing with ligament tears, labral tears, anything cartilage related where you've torn it, then you obviously need a doctor to address the issue. Torn ligaments have to surgically reattached, especially if it's an ACL tear.
In terms of exercising again, once you've had your injury repaired on of the ways SSL is able to aid athletes and get them back into action is with the AquaKinetic program. The water provides resistance without a weight load. It's almost impossible to cause further damage. Take the shoulder capsule for example. It's a very complicated joint. we move our shoulder in awkward positions. To get a shoulder restored properly you have to be able to move your shoulder in various ranges of motion and in all different planes of movement and stimulate the Central Nervous System to recruit as many motor units and and muscles around the shoulder capsule as possible. Using the water can strengthen your shoulder (or other injured area) without damaging the connective tissue. The minute you feel pain, you stop moving your arm. There is no resistance, it's not like conventional weight training where you are holding a weight.
When rehabbing an injury it's important to respect and understand the connective tissue in our body. Connective tissue is the tissue that attaches things together, it connects. Ligaments connect bones together, but they are not elastic. Muscles attach to tendons which attach to bone and help provide power. Working out with excessive weight loads loosens the tendons. Anything elastic will loosen under a heavy weight load. It will stretch out but eventually loose power and tear. Heavy weight lifting is not in any athlete's best interest.
One of the unique features of our AquaKinetic program is that we use the same methods for rehabilitation as we do to train and strengthen muscles on a daily basis. Our AquaKinetic program is used to increase the speed of muscle contraction. In order to get muscles to fire quickly, you must learn to relax them. Try tensing up your arm and then try to throw something-it goes nowhere. The AquaKinetic program teaches the CNS, to relax and then fire them. Our Ballistic Ballwork Program reinforces the concept of teaching muscles to relax and fire as well. We never use a weight that exceeds four pounds to minimize the risk of injury.
If you come to SSL, we also use an Accelerating Isokinetic machine. The beauty of this machine is that the resistance is determined by how much force you can apply. There is no weight load. It works much like the gears of a bike. we can safely take someone who has been injured and immediately restore strength and function with minimal risk of injury. There is no weight load on the connective tissue.
In sports your power comes from your ability to store and use elastic energy. It's the ability of a muscle to stretch out and fire quickly. To be able to restore that strength you must be able to train in different planes of movement. Using the water, ballwork and Accelerating Isokinetic machine accomplish that.
Comments
I recently came across the Sports Science lab and Gavin MacMillian worked with me to recover my shoulder injury. I feel better then I have in months and am still recovering, this stuff works trust me I have seen the results
Like the "baseballprofessor", I suffered a severe stretch to the supraspinatus, as well as injury to the anterior deltoid, doing a dumbell press, after some explosive barbell work.
To make a long story short, after four months of therapy, it was the AquaKinetics program that finally brought my shoulder structure to its ultimate healing. Hot/cold compresses alleviated the pain, and I had some great liniments to work with, but until Aquakinetics, all the dynamic approaches (e.g., resistance bands, light weights, basketball ball handling and dribbling) only served to exacerbate the situation.
What really gets me is how all the medical people and trainers, that I consulted, were totally clueless about the injury. I am surprised that Mo Williams, of the Cleveland Cavaliers, was able to resume play after two months. I needed four.
This advice is timely for me. I just strained a couple of muscles in my leg doing sprint sets and was wondering if getting back in the pool for AquaKinetic training was such a good idea. Looks like I will be getting in there today!
I will provide a personal example of how water based exercise is beneficial to pitchers. In the mid-80's when I was a college baseball player at a top juco in Florida, I damaged my rotator cuff (there were many functional issues behind this, what I know now is I did waaay too much bench pressing, curls, etc - all traditional because we did not know any better - so I damaged the decelerators because they were weak and front was too strong) late in my soph season. I knew immediately the day after I pitched and tried to play catch, and the feeling was if something was "unattached". I skipped a start, rested, then pitched again in crucial game, after taking a long time to warm up. And I pitched 10 innings that day! My next start was in state tourney game 1, and I went 8+ in a win.
Here is the good part. Knowing we would be playing every day, and that we had a 3 man rotation, I wanted to pitch again asap. We stayed in a hotel, so day after my start, I got in hotel pool, and did as many ranges of motion, using actions from "thrower's 10" dumbbell exercises, as I could. My shoulder really responded to this. I even did it again that evening, and again next day. My arm felt much better, so with tourney on line, I went to coach and asked for ball on 2 days rest. I went 7+, but lost.
Unfortunately, I did not continue to act on my intuition fully, and went back to lifting routines, and worked even "harder" in weight room after I transferred to DI school. And of course I hurt shoulder again during senior year.
Of course, now I know that I tore supraspinatus. In time it healed. In mid-90's I coached small college baseball, and had players lift traditionally. But, now that I have been exposed to SSL, and have used exercises myself, I know what works best, and it is NOT the traditional conventional wisdom.
The aquakinetic program has brought me back from a shoulder replacement!