Training with a broken clavicle

Just over two weeks ago (on the 28th June) I broke my clavicle in a fall, and it was bad enough that it needed surgery. I had a steel plate put on it on Wednesday the 10th. Obviously I have been doing no training since. I don't want to use this as an excuse NOT to train, else I'll fall in to bad habits, but there's no way I'm going to be pushing myself for a few weeks.

It's a real shame this has happened, since I was having the best progress under F1, H1 and Ido's floreio art that I'd had in my 2 years of training, and it's now the summer holidays for me, where I had a lot of training lined up.... and my plans have taken a large whack. Thank God for coursera! https://www.coursera.org/course/exphys - this starts in a week, for those interested.

Now that I'm feeling recovered from the operation, I feel ready to start some of F1 again. Obviously I'm going to have to scale back on what I'm doing - e.g. MN/Pe 6 won't be possible, so will have to go back to Pe 2 and 3, which I think more time on would be good.

I can only use one arm, so the whole structure of the program would have to change and I'm not sure what to do about the iMs.

I'll detail what I think I'll be able to continue to work on.

Mn - Pe 2/3. Pike leans or jefferson curls are going to be difficult.

SLS - Se 1. I'm wondering about using harop curls rather than the leg curls so I don't have to rest on my shoulder.

SL - Pe 1. iM is okay. The only one that is! That's a shame 

FL - Pe 3. The rocking makes it uncomfortable so back to fully mastering Pe 3 then. But I'm still can't do any form of table.

HBP Obvious no goes.

sPL

RC

I think it's a possibility that I could add some easy unilateral exercises (incline one arm rows, incline oa push ups) maybe with the 15 rep scheme and a 45 degree incline, with german arm swings (again, the rotary element of xiaopengs hurts the other shoulder) and the bent sideways lat stretch.

However, what am I going to do with Mn and FL? The prescribed iMs are not possible, and given that they're as important as the main element, I need to find an alternative.

As for my right arm, well, I think the pendulum swings a few times a day and the general mobilisation of the area will suffice 

I'm a martial artist (a beginner though) so will work some springs legs (there's an amazing post on the forum by Craig - https://www.gymnasticbodies.com/forum/topic/9500-frequency-of-exercise-in-legs-vs-arms/?p=93370 ). My lower body flexibility could absolutely be a lot better so I'll be working on that a lot. Although I can't get Kit's book, I'll still follow some of his ideas and integrate that into my work.

Thanks

Sorry to hear about your broken clavicle Hercules.

You put together a great plan , well done. Just be very careful, even if your body can benefit from some of the exercises you outlined & they won't interfere with your healing, you may not be ready yet in a sense that if you lost balance, fell, or anything similar happened, you could not catch yourself and would risk another injury, or a reinjury of your clavicle, or both. (It happened to me; I went skiing after a shoulder surgery and stupidly lost balance while standing in line; I was able to protect the shoulder, but by doing so I could not catch myself and  break the fall - I was lucky, it was painful, but bore no LT consequences...) Don't count on being lucky.

Your clavicle should be GTG in 6 to 8 weeks + rehab/prehab.

Echoing Fred; smart approach, but keep healing as the priority, not as a barrier to training harder. Progress must come second to regaining full function, whether it be stiff hips or a metal plate.

Get well soon. Train the merry hell out of stances and transitions, and use the time to focus on good hip strength/flexibility and all the SL/FL straight body work you can carry IMO. Just plain leave the arms as much as you can; better to spend a bit of extra time stretching to fix a few weeks stiffness than set yourself back in healing at all. It's hard to swallow, but during downtime rest isn't a waste of time-- it's the most productive thing you can spend your time doing. The body thanks you for it, just not the mind

Get well soon.

Thanks Fred and Charm. I think my current was starting to enter my mind as a barrier, something to be overcome, rather than to be left in peace and allowed to simply rest. 

I need to keep that in mind

One of my problems is the uncertainty as to how long it will take to recover - as a result, I added in the unilateral work. Foundation itself emphasised to me that the body adapts very slowly, and following that reasoning, I thought it also heals very slowly; while it may have recovered in 6 weeks, I still wouldn't be able to train. We'll see how it pans out. I'll leave out the unilateral work for now then. I tried some oa rows yesterday and felt the uneven forces in my other shoulder - no pain, but it just plain needs to be left.

So far as I the iMs - for FL i'm going to do a rotate in to bridge against the wall for 5 reps, just going half way and for Mn, a conservative ostrich walk for 5 meters. Both feel okay - no associated discomfort or pain. Sound okay?

I'm not doing anything for the next few weeks, no skiing or anything (why, it's British summer!) nor abroad. We've got a week's trip to the sea side in just under a month though, but I'll be careful when I'm there. I can't risk plate failure, I'm a musician, I want to get back to playing as soon as possible - missed out on my exam due to this anyway!  And that means leaving it.

Also, I've lost some innervation in the skin following the op atop the anterior deltoid, running across the top of the lateral 2/3rds of the clavicle  - I'm pretty sure it hasn't affected any muscle though - and can this feeling return? Not that it really matters - not like I've lost feeling in my hands, or paralysis of the arm....

Do not train your upper body.  Allowing the plate to fully heal will have a far greater long term impact on your training progress then trying to squeeze out a few exercises.  

You have incurred a serious injury.  Yes, it is annoying and yes, it stinks.  But it is time to accept it and move on; responsibly.  And in this instance that means leaving it alone.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

I had a friend who tore a couple of tendons in his ankle playing soccer. He rested and rehabbed it for around 2.5 months, not running and using his crutches for everything. He felt he had recovered and decided to try out for our baseball team. Running to first base, his ankle was unable to support him and he undid all of his progress in a second of poor judgement. Last I saw him, he was back on crutches. His doctor told him if he tried anything like that again, he may never play sports. Ever.

Don't be that guy (purely hypothetical of course ) rest and recover fully, then rehab, then build basic strength again. When I saw the topic of the thread I felt it was such an odd proposition to train with a FAULTY body (in it's current state) that I had to relay my opinion on this. I have trained through less serious injuries before, and I ended up messing myself up really badly.

Rest, rehab, and come back more determined. Foundation isn't going anywhere

You might have a look at Steve Cotter's story too, for training around a serious upper body injury. He took the opportunity to work the hell out of SLS, stances and kicks, and accelerated his overall xingyiquan progress with that focused time.

Besides, what better time to get splits, ABH and hollow hold down to a fine art? This will only set you back in the areas you can't work, there is no reason not to get ahead in the rest of your body. Train *around,* not *through*. We all want you back up and training too, and all the advice above comes from the experience (first or secondhand) that this is the quickest and best way to get you back into the full swing of it.

You haven't done anything permanent to yourself at this stage; don't risk doing that for the sake of some subpar upper body work.

Thanks guys. So absolutely, with all your recommendations, Coach, and as I've said, I'm just going to leave the upper body.

Given that, I reckon it'd make most sense to abandon any formal training program, and just do stuff on a day-to-day basis, as and when I feel, working on ABH, HBH, flexibility, stances/easy kicks and the SLS (a great struggle for me due to anthropometric concerns, so I'll have to exercise caution - can't, as Fred has said, lose my balance and then just end up on my face or with reinjury).

I feel like I know my limits - however, this same judgement also thought it was a good idea to add in what would only end up being subpar work with risk of injury.

Aadil, that is my precise reason for making this topic; I don't want to be "that guy"! I'm looking for feedback and advice on how to train around it, or as I put it, with it. It sucks that I'm injured, as I was looking forward to this longer summer break (due to finishing school exams, first year of them, far more to come!) being an excuse to train, train, eat, drink, sleep - I don't want to completely forgo this awesome once in a lifetime holiday, so although my priority is indeed resting, I recognise I can still train, even if only 1/10th of what I'd got lined up. There's still plenty of stuff that I can being doing.

Charm - have you got any links re, Steve Cotter?

If you can walk, you can train and improve your legs if you can't you can still stretch.

Cotter's story is interesting; I have misplaced the link, but I'm sure you can find it somewhere. It boils down to breaking his wrist, IIRC, and being unable to do most of the hand whipping, pushups etc in his martial arts classes. So he worked the living hell out of footwork, stances and SLS while the others were working on their hand skills. So much of one's power comes from the hips and core that being forced to train nothing but that area put him well ahead of his peers in the somewhat longer term.

Basics is what it boils down to, basics and hard work on smaller, focused areas. This is the same as foundation-- rather than rotation through three pressing movements we do one at a time, with focus and concentration.

If it were me, I would be training low stances and footwork more than anything, with a secondary focus on flexibility. Don't stop at 5x5 for SLS; use this time to push yourself (sensibly!) and build up some serious work capacity. Get very light on your feet and get excellent mobility in your hips, straight body work if you can, and you'll be ahead of a lot of people doing Foundation.

The injury is not pleasant, to ridiculously understate it, but if you mix determination and (un)common sense you can turn your disadvantage into opportunity. This isn't being optimistic, you can't positive thinking your bones together, this is looking at options instead of obstacles

Charm said:

You might have a look at Steve Cotter's story too, for training around a serious upper body injury. He took the opportunity to work the hell out of SLS, stances and kicks, and accelerated his overall xingyiquan progress with that focused time.

Besides, what better time to get splits, ABH and hollow hold down to a fine art? This will only set you back in the areas you can't work, there is no reason not to get ahead in the rest of your body. Train *around,* not *through*. We all want you back up and training too, and all the advice above comes from the experience (first or secondhand) that this is the quickest and best way to get you back into the full swing of it.

You haven't done anything permanent to yourself at this stage; don't risk doing that for the sake of some subpar upper body work.

This would be my recommendation. Spend your time on Foundation's lower body and core work. You'll make plenty of progress with your upper body once you're fully healed (as long as you take your time easing back into things).

Once everything is fully healed, that broken bone won't matter, but if you try to train with it you are going to deserve the [possibly permanent] disability you will earn by doing so.

I will tell you my personal opinion: Don't risk disabling yourself. Leave that bone alone and follow your doctor's orders for rehab.

Haha, I think you don't quite understand - I was/am prepared to leave my broken for months, should it need it; in the interim period I was talking about working on my non broken left side with the unilateral work. Which, I'm going to leave anyway. I don't want disability thanks.

However, given that there's a metal plate in there, once the area's healed, could this have lasting strength and mobility consequences?

I'm fine, other than the break - walking and even my daily quality of life isn't really affected because my left hand is perfectly good for everyday things.

Hercules said:

Also, I've lost some innervation in the skin following the op atop the anterior deltoid, running across the top of the lateral 2/3rds of the clavicle  - I'm pretty sure it hasn't affected any muscle though - and can this feeling return? Not that it really matters - not like I've lost feeling in my hands, or paralysis of the arm....

Can I bump this question?

Have you asked your surgeon about this last question Hercules?

I think he might be the one to know for sure.

I'm seeing him in a week's time and I'll be sure to ask him. Didn't get to see him after the op, and nor did I get a pre-op for that matter - my asthma flared up badly after the break and they didn't even check my chest, despite having been on a course of prednisolone just days before. 

It seems like you know what to do

Thanks for all the help everyone 

Things are going well - a nurse said the wound was healing nicely and there's no sign of infection. I've been working lightly but daily on stances and flexibility. It's nothing too structured, and I've been doing a lot of limbering as per Kit Laughlin, making a real point of reaching my end point for straddle, side splits and front splits several times per day. I've been doing some longer holds of bent HBH but have not done any ABH yet. I'll start some harder work on them this evening.

It's lovely weather outside, almost hitting 30 degrees - strange for a British summer! I will have a very weird tan line around where the dressing is 

Be careful; I always get a stretch in the clavicle when doing ABH (well, maybe a tug, not a stretch)

Otherwise, you seem to be golden

An update - been working on the stance work/kicking/footwork, flexibility and the core work of F1 and I'm enjoying the focus. 

Went to a physiotherapist and when she asked me to reach overhead, I had about 95% of my original ROM in abduction and extension so she was really pleased. I was quite impressed too - I've hardly lost any range of motion and that's definitely due to my previous H1 and F1 work. However, I'll definitely have lost strength in that range of motion, and afterwards it did feel a bit uncomfortable. I have lost some internal rotation though.

I got some basic mobilisations of the scaps and neck to do so - nothing much on that front. I'm going to get kit laughlin's books (finally!) for post rehab work.

The physiotherapist printed off the x-rays for me - how kind of her!

sPl PE1 will condition your scapulae well enough, don't worry

You've done yourself a big favour with patience-- leaving it alone means an all clear sooner, and an all-clear means back into training and progress sooner

Congrats on having the discipline and patience to give the healing process a head start!

Hey guys - another update on my progress.

The wound was healing up nicely - the dressing came off last week. The scar's not too bad. Unfortunately, the medial side of the cut  was pretty red a few days ago, most uncomfortable part (even allowing for the fact I can't feel the other lateral half of it), and look pretty inflamed. There appeared to be some fluid secreted. I thought nothing of it, but my mum dragged me to the doctor - and there's a small infection on it. Got topical antibiotics for it though so it'll get better. Guess Mums know best (one surgery wound of hers got multiple infections).

My shoulder itself is feeling much better - I can finally play the violin again and am regaining full function in the arm. Overhead Rom still isn't really comfortable, but its improving in terms of comfort.

I'm going to go cycling later before it rains, and next week (providing the infection gets better) I'm going to do some swimming in preparation for a seaside holiday.

So far a training goes, been adding in footwork drills for martial arts (footwork is probably my biggest weakness, along with controlling distance and being relaxed) and I got Kit L's book, so there'll be some modifications to what stretching I'm doing (along with a good post from Patrick).

Don't fell off your bike

Phew, 35 minutes in the hills - not easy. 

FredInChina said:

Don't fell off your bike

 

I'm an asthmatic - by definition slow, substantially reducing my desire to do anything out of order, and making the likelihood of me falling off a bit slimmer.