Heel Hook Rehab
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Case study following an injury sustained from a heel hook.
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This is meant as education not meant as medical advice. If you have an injury seek a medical professional.
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Posted @withregram @coach_christinamarie “You always regret not training the position you got injured in” – @drandreospina
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Lucky for me, and thanks to @functional_range_conditioning I do train my knees in rotation.
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A few weeks ago I injured my knee training. My knee was massive (think grapefruit size, and then imagine my leg being nearly the same size all the way down).
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There are two messages to convey here:
1. Injury prevention is not possible, but injury mitigation is.
✨I train my knees specifically knowing they are at risk in the activities I enjoy doing most. Thanks to doing so, what was thought to be a torn PCL turned out to be an MCL + PCL sprain, and the orthopedic telling me that aside from that, I actually have quite a healthy knee despite having done martial arts most of my life, and bjj for the past 9+ years.
2. Rest + ice is incomplete.
✨Unfortunately I didn’t take videos of what my knee flexion looked like in the beginning, but I promise you (and you can ask @hunterfitness and @drlocrao ) it did NOT look anything like it does in the above video.
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So what have I been doing?
✨CARs in a pain free range
✨Knee Capsular CARs in a pain free range
✨Positional Isometrics
✨ @functionalrangerelease with @drlocrao
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In part one I was primarily focused on regaining knee rotation, and working positional isometrics (PAILs & RAILs) in varying degrees of knee flexion (knee bend).
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My focus has recently shifted to adding in low level PAILs for knee rotation as well, because I need my knee to be able to understand all the degrees of freedom a knee has (meaning I need to be able to not only flex and extend, but rotate as well).
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My knee flexion has drastically improved while in hip extension (bending my knee while standing).
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Not pictured: long duration, low effort bouts on the stationary bike to get some more circulation going through knee stuff.
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Happy with the progress, but there is still more work to be done. Isometrics are just the start.