Fighter Maintenance

[Bazz Steinsson]

So apparently I need to post today. I have recently developed a couple of ....sitis's in my elbow and I am sure other people have had similar injuries and I was wondering what they have done to help heal them. I was also thinking it might be useful for people to post what injuries they have suffered and how it happened so other fighters could possible avoid the future injuries. For me I have bursitis and the tennis elbow that is on the other side of the arm. I've been given some stretches for the tennis elbow part. The bursitis is more of a wait and see if it gets worse or not. The Doctor didn't tell me what worse was though, so any body out there gone through something similar? Any suggestions?

[Kvigr]

The repetitive injury I get is to the rotator cuff muscles. I almost always pull them when I throw a wrap above chest level and it gets blocked before my hand comes back inside my shoulder line. Exercising is the best thing I could do. But I don't, so instead I stopped throwing an effective shot. Really, as a whole (the SCA fighting community) we are terrible at not stretching and exercising there is a lot of sports therapy that we could use but don't.

[Lianor de Najera]

They're not fighting related injuries, but I have bursitis in my hips, tendonitis in my left knee, and have had epicondilitis (the opposite of tennis elbow) in my elbow. In addition to stretching, a big thing to watch is muscle strength/balance. You may have certain muscle groups that are disproportionately stronger or weaker than others, and an uneven pull on a joint can cause strain on the tendon. I was given a number of strengthening exercises in addition to stretches to treat my knee, and it's the exercises that have made the most difference.

[Bazz Steinsson]

Well this didn't really catch on but here's my last two bits.

My experience so far is that we but the most stress on the elbows and the shoulders. We need to stretch these areas. There's all kind of streches for the shoulder but the most important ones for the elbow are pull your fingers back with the elbow facing up and with it facing down. Execising with a stress ball will also help strengthen the elbow, you can throw one in the car and do it while you are stuck in traffic. I think we probably need to be traveling with ice packs more as well. I know I wasn't able to ice my elbow at investiture until I got back to Saskatoon several hours later. I also know I would have gone days before icing if I stayed camping at the event. I also would have self medicated which would have made for a happy Bazz but I suspect it would not have helped my elbow any.

The next area for me are my knees, but I'm not sure if this is from fighting or because I all ready blew them out. Any thoughts?

My last thought is we need to listen to our bodies more. I try hard but it is not easy. At investiture I was at about 80% and thought I would give it a shot. Now I'm probably going to be missing Coronet and I'm going on six months with out a right elbow.

Guess it's time to become a lefty.

[Kvigr]

Your right about taking care of youself we are bad at it. It's not that hard to bring ice to an event though.

As for knees I haven't seen anyone wreck their knees doing what we do. All the guys that I know, that have problems with there knees, blew them out doing other things.

[Wilfrid]

Specifically related to the OP;
Google is your friend; University of Michigan Sports Medicine bursitis rehab exercises. My sister the doctor has told me in the past that "worse" is "more pain" or "less function." *shrug*

Related to the more general theme of Avacal fighter arm health, I can't say that I'm an expert in physical fitness (or fighting ), but I've had the concept of warmup/cooldown stretches pounded into me pretty good, and I'm grateful for it. Stretching really reduces post-workout pain in my experience, though according to Wikipedia its theraputic/injury-reducing benefit may be overstated. Anyway, I'm a big fan of data, even data that I assume people have, so here's a few links to stretching exercises for the curious.
Netfit UK has got some illustrated techniques here, arms are near the bottom. Also, shoulder/triceps, shoulder, upper back, and neck.

[Stragin]

This is 2 years late but, I have destroyed both of my elbows. I have had for the past 4 years or so extreme accute tedonitis in both elbows which the doc thinks may have developed into arthritis. Both shoulders have been pumeled to within an inch of there lives. the elbows I think were done in by improperly thrown wraps for the right elbow and poor madu training and use on the left. The shoulders were really just from getting hit alot in the begining and not having protection. This of course stopped me from fighting altogether until recently. i have been doing therapy, massage and various others to get them to the point that I don't need the 12 T4's/day that I was taking. Stragin better now Stragin fighting again.
S