Dislocation injury risk?

Searched the forums without finding an answer so I decided to post. If the question has been answered before I apologize and appreciate a link.

Anyway, I keep getting these wicked mental images when doing some of the mobility drills... S I have to ask. Is it possible to physically dislocate your own shoulder when doing some of the mobility drills in the handstand course?

 

 

 

Yes, especially if you have previously dislocated and or are prone to it. The point is to extend the ROM past your current abilities; if this is done too aggressively or uncontrolled, yes injury can result.

Work cautiously, err on the side of a lighter weight, be conscious of what you are doing, pay attention to the details of the drills and listen to the reaction from your body.

As long as you are careful, over time the drills will make your shoulders especially far more stable and less likely to be injured. You just need to be very wary of trying to go too fast (as in too much ROm) or too heavy for your current capabilities. Give it all time to rebuild stronger

Coach put this a bit better than me to someone who has experienced an injury...

 

 

Coach Sommer said:

Sorry to hear about your injury.  If the pain is more than a mild annoyance or mild discomfort, go get it checked.  Regardless you now get to "enjoy" some mandatory rest until the injury is pain-free and then begin with only very scaled back work as you evaluate how the injury is healing.

 

Incidents of this type generally occur when someone, with the best of intentions, fails to separate the intensity of their conditioning work from the intensity of their mobility work.  As you have discovered, if someone approaches their mobility work with the same intensity as their conditioning work, it is only a question of "when", not "if", they will get injured.  

 

In the future, always look at mobility as a long term goal.   Yes you want to work, but you also want to make sure that there is at least another rep or two still in the bank; especially when you are a beginner to GST and mobility work in general.  Remember that you can always go harder tomorrow, but you can't take it back after you have gone too hard today. 

 

Unfortunately this is a lesson which requires experience to appreciate and the only way to gain that necessary experience is to suffer the consequences of our bad decisions (myself included).

 

Be well.

 

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Thanks for the reply. I think you managed to answer my follow up question as well. I´ve been reading up on shoulder joint dislocations and learned that overhead sports are a risk factor as they stretch the ligaments, thus increasing the risk of a dislocation. My next thought then was that maybe the same was true with regards to doing a lot of the mobility drills in H1. Stretching the ligaments and increasing risk of injury. But what you´re saying is with time and patience the mobility drills will make the shoulders less prone to injury?

I´m probably over catious at the moment as I just spent the summer, "leg up" due to a bone fracture. Non training related but enough to be reminded of my mortality... 

May I suggest you emphasize being catious with the mobility in the H1 text? I might be wrong but I don´t remember reading about the injury risk of the dislocation drills in H1.

 

Thanks again

As a whole i would say the F1 mobility drills probably carry a slightly higher injury risk. I haven't experienced a single injury and pretty much everyone who has, had indicated they went too heavy, too fast etc and they knew that even before they got the feedback.

I seriously doubt a real dislocation risk unless you either have prior dislocation (which I know some people have rehabbbed nigh-completely with H1, and I have a friend currently doing so) or you throw something ridiculous on the bar and try to exlocate it.

H1 will make your shoulders remarkably stable and healthy. You are not going for positions which require ligaments stretching even if this was something Coach would promote, and Im fairly sure this can't be productively done past childhood. You are going for full ROM, not 120%

Thanks again! It really helps the big picture, getting some question marks cleared out.

One last thing I didn´t really get. "You are not going for positions which require ligaments stretching even if this was something Coach would promote"

This I didn´t really comprehend. Is this something you strive for in elite gymnastics?

If you have dislocated your shoulder before (especially if you are under 30) you are 90% more likely to dislocate it again. This is especially true if you have multi-directional instability (these are the group of people who can dislocate their shoulder whenever they want).

 

The worse position for dislocating your shoulder is anterior distraction with external rotation of the shoulder. If you look up the apprehension test on youtube it is this movement. In say the sporting world it is those moments where you fall on your forearm with your arm over your head that causes dislocation. Think of a martial artist breakfalling forward with their arms to far out in front of them, or a rugby player diving for a try. I would say about 99% of shoulder dislocations are anterior although it is possible to have a posterior shoulder dislocation.

EvolutionarySideSteps said:

Thanks again! It really helps the big picture, getting some question marks cleared out.

One last thing I didn´t really get. "You are not going for positions which require ligaments stretching even if this was something Coach would promote"

This I didn´t really comprehend. Is this something you strive for in elite gymnastics?

No, or at least, not unless you are born in to a trad cirque family or, I imagine, enter a harsh gymnastics or ballet school in certain very competitive countries, but that's entirely supposition~

Its certainly not something to worry about here if you are following the courses

Dilslocate any type of joint is very difficult when the movement is perfectly under control. under control i mean that positive and negative phase must be performed around 5 to 10 seconds each one when you are training around your ROM limit.

by the way as you practice mobility with muscles without moving fast through joint ROM you brain is actually preventing joint instability with 2 methods:

1- what you can explore with your muscles (with both strength and stretch ) is actually safe, talking about neural parameters that describe the movement pattern

2-contraction of antagonist muscles (it's the only one case of antagonist muscles contraction), that for definition is the best way to stabilize a joint through unknown pattern.

Both of them ensure that slow and controlled movements are safe. then remember that if you need to increase speed to pass over a ROM obstacle (due to lack of strength) OR you are increasing speed because lack of muscles control, you are compromising one of those 2 factors.

be always conscious of what you are doing.

Does this mean that even if it feels quite uncomfortable, but you can keep your form and can pull yourself in position very slowly and let go of it very slowly, that it will most likely be okay?

If there's pain, that's a sign you're attempting too much, and should reduce weight and/or ROM. 

 

Larges amounts of discomfort is fine, and in many cases to be expected.

i've had an anterior shoulder dislocation and the guys above cautioned me along the same vein, just warm up thoroughly and dont be at all shy to start wide in the beginning reps and work your way in.(applicable also to flexion and extension PE's)

i've used zero methods of rehab aside from: myofascial release, flexion + extension pe's + the occasional dislocate session for giggles and i haven't even gotten remotely close to re-dislocating my right shoulder.

i suffered my first seperation at age 15(for reference)

edit: if you need rehab, do so. i just couldnt afford medical services and rested it back to health until i could ride my bike again