Wrist Lock Injury Advice

[ITRDC5]

Hi guys,
I suffered a pretty bad wrist lock yesterday at training from a much larger blue belt. I heard a few pops and it is pretty painful.

It isn't broken but stuff like changing gear in my car is difficult. Can anyone please advise on the best way to speed up recovery?

I have a competition in six weeks that I have been aiming for for a while now and I want to make sure im good by then.

I'm thinking of maybe taking a break now until the new year, swimming to keep my conditioning and using tiger balm and wrist support but jeez it is annoying.

Thanks guys.

 

[Codger]

If you're really fixed on a 6 week timescale then you want to see a health professional ASAP. It might well heal on it's own in that time or it might not. Wrists can be very slow to heal due to relatively poor blood supply apparently. Certainly i've found that in the past. Generally for joint injuries you want to

1. Don't make it worse by training through it. All it takes is one slip and you're back to square one or worse.
2. Protect it with a brace if you need it but don't wear it all day every day unless absolutely necessary.
3. Take NSAIDS every day for a week or so, if your stomach can handle it.
4. GENTLE practice of working its range of motion to stop it getting reduced, aka "stretching" but not stretching in the common parlance in the early stages.
5. Gentle strengthening exercises for similar reasons to 4 but wait until it's feeling stronger before worrying about these.

Do do stuff that hurts it other than very mild discomfort during stretching. And by stretching I don't mean pulling it around. You start off using the joint's own power to take it though the range of motion and only start assisting the stretching much later, possibly weeks later. The last thing you want to do is to overstretch or hurt it whilst it's trying to heal. All you're trying to do is to keep it moving a bit and stop the ROM from getting reduced by the injury.

I'm not a health pro but I've had a lot of joint injuries and operations and this protocol is what I get given each and every time so I assume it's pretty universal.

But without seeing a physio or similar, you could make something worse.

 

[RJ Green]

which one? goose neck?

k-tape does a great job acting as a brace that still gives you 90% ROM. i damn near gave myself carpal tunnel a few years ago shaking so many drinks and k-tape held things together and was far less intrusive than other options.

take a week off grappling/lifting/climbing. keep moving it all week - circles, back and forth, etc. you don't need to crank on it, just keep things moving.

when you feel better try doing some pushups from your knees and see how it reacts. work back to normal pushups.

the pain is probably inflammation, i imagine shifting 1>2 and 3>4 are worse than 2>3 and 4>5?

swimming will help if your form is good, although it still might be too much impact/resistance the first week or so.

it'll feel better when it stops hurting.