Partial tear of UCL

[Taznia]

I'm a javelin thrower and recently injured myself throwing.

My arm went very numb, I couldn't grip and couldn't move my elbow very well. This wore off after a few days, and my MRI scan confirmed a partial tear of my UCL ligament.


I was wondering if anyone could give me some advice to help me heal faster / rehab etc, as I really want to fix up fast and efficiently. I know that the collagen needs time to mature from Type 3 so I should take it easy but I have read in some places about encouraging fibroblast activity etc and I was wondering if there are any ways to speed this up. Rehab exercises would also be helpful.


Thank you!

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[persy1]

The first thing that springs to my mind is to wonder why the injury happened in the first place. I treated a young javelin thrower (15 years old) for a shoulder/upper arm problem. He did very well initially then completely plateaued until I started looking at peripherals and found he had restricted and uncomfortable upper torso (thoracic) right rotation which is a major component of javelin throwing. Dealing with this restricted movement resulted in resolution of the problem. If you can't rotate to the right properly and "wind yourself up" for the throw then you will put an excessive amount of strain on the shoulder/elbow/forearm as they try to compensate. This could cause an injury in any of those joints. Part of your rehabilitation should be to look at your thoracic rotation movement. It might be useful to get someone to video you throwing the javelin (once you are fit enough to do so) to see if you can spot any technique faults which would cause excessive strain in your throwing arm. Have a look at pictures of other throwers on the internet and see how much rotation of the body is involved in getting the arm far enough back to get that unfurling action which produces an effortless and powerful throw. Every component of that movement is important to avoid injury. Have a look at this website http://www.coachkrall.com/Articles/Jav/Speed.pdf Some of it is quite complicated but it does demonstrate the different components of the throw and towards the bottom of the aricle it focuses on faulty tecniques and in particular mentions the possibility of elbow injury in relation to faulty technique. As far as the specific elbow rehab is concerned you would be well-advised to see a physiotherapist who can supervise the progression of your exercise which will involve gradually restoring power to the muscles and stretching out the scar tissue which will repair the tear in the direction of normal stress, and returning it to as close as possible to the original tissue. Hope this helps and good luck with your rehab.