Dr Larry Nassar of Gymnastics Doctor just posted on his Facebook page that Kathryn has had surgery and doesn’t require a second surgery as she is now in early recovery.Good news!

Gymnastics Doctor have posted a few updates regarding Kathryn. Best of luck to her.

An official press release was published by British Gymnastics this evening. Poor Daniel Keatings has suffered a tear to his Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) whilst training this week. Daniel will under go surgery but is likely to miss the remainder of this year.

“Following the European Championships Daniel Keatings sustained an injury in training and has torn his anterior cruciate ligament. He will undergo reconstructive surgery and start a 6-9 month rehabilitation programme with his British Gymnastics medical team.”

- Pippa Bennett, Chief Medical Officer British Gymnastics.

Last year, a mother of one of our gymnasts came to me asking me for advice. Her daughter had been complaining of back pain and also leg pain.  I referred her to a Podiatrist explaining that her daughter had very flattened arches and as she walked, her feet showed a very prominent inward direction. Despite the cost, €80 for the first consultation (the majority of which could be claimed back on health insurance) I advised that it would be best to have a proper assessment done so that structural problems could be fixed now as opposed to in years to come when the child will more than likely suffer knee, hip and back pain. I also suggested some light massage work to loosen the muscles out and also to offer her comfort. She thanked me but they never made an appointment.

Later during the year, I was approached by the same mother who said that her child was suffering direct knee pain. It is always best in these situations to talk to the child about how they are feeling as opposed to their parent saying they feel X and feel Y – when they might not. As Therapists, we are trained to choose our words carefully so I asked her to describe what she felt and when this feeling occurred as opposed to putting words in her mouth. She told me that she felt pain under her knee, often a dull ache when resting but a sharper pain when running, jumping etc. At this stage I had an idea in my head of what the problem was but waited to decide until I saw her knee. Quite a prominent bump was visible when the gymnast revealed her knee. It wasn’t too big but it did indicate the beginnings of Osgood Schlatters disease, a very common injury in gymnasts. The gymnast had all of the factors local pain, swelling and tenderness over the tibial tuberosity which was exacerbated by exercise. I advised her to take some time off training, complete rest for 2 – 3 weeks and see how it is and to ice it at home.

A month off training made no difference to this poor gymnast’s knee; in fact the lump had become sizeably bigger. I referred her to an excellent Therapist who has treated me and some former team mates for this injury and others. In August he told her to take 2 months off and return each month for a check up. The recovery to the leg was slow but progressive. By November she started to feel better until her right leg then became far worse affected than the left.

Those who have suffered with Osgood Schlatters will know that there’s very little you can do. Rest is the key factor. You must stop all running, jumping, bouncing.  Osgoods is a injury that has a very slow recovery period. It can be exhausting and draining having to wait for the pain to subside all the while watching your team mates progress and move on ahead of you. It can also be somewhat lonely.

 The gymnast is still out of full training, she trains mainly on bars, doing some light beam work and a lot of conditioning work. She has missed many competitions so far this season. I spoke to her last week about how she is feeling and getting on. I was surprised at how positive she is about her injury. She said that she has been watching her team mates over the last few months and can see the mistakes they are making when performing moves and she can’t wait to get back to full training when she will train harder than she ever has before and put all of her noted points into action. I commended her on the strength and determination she has shown throughout the last few months. She said that while she knows she has fallen behind her team mates on vault, floor and beam, she knows that it will take time to catch up and that she can do it.  It made me think, this girl has a great attitude towards injury, an absolutely superb attitude. I suffered with the injury briefly  (yet still have the lumps to show for it!) and can admit that I, in no way had as positive an attitude as this gymnast.

So how do you cope with injury? How do you deal with being out of training for a couple of weeks or months? For coaches, how do you keep gymnasts in this sort of situation motivated? How do you keep their spirits up? I’d be very interested in hearing from you all, from any readers of any sport!

The End

Performing a simple handspring vault, I landed incorrectly, meaning one foot took a disproportionate amount of the impact, mainly on the big toe joint from pointing my toes so much during the move. I was competing in an international friendly at the time and oddly I had complained to my coach that this vault was too easy for my level.  I almost felt like Kerri Strug in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.   I was in incredible pain but presented to the judge before hobbling off to the side. Bruising and swelling came almost instantly. Half of my foot was swollen, I couldn’t fit it into my shoe. At the hospital I was told that there were no breaks and just to rest.

 I was in terrible pain and on crutches for  two months.  For the next few months I trained occasionally but was unable to cope with the pain for any length of time.  Something was never right. I saw two specialists who couldn’t see much of a problem, except a very swollen tendon (“which will go down”), bruising and a lack of movement in the joint due to the swelling. They refused to operate on me, instructing me to ice it before and after training and whenever I felt I needed it.

When I was seventeen, I had to stop training altogether.  It broke my heart to make this decision but there was no other way, I was just in too much pain. I lived with the pain for 3 years, not being able to walk home from school or wear high heels, like every other girl did, without being crippled within an hour.  I was devastated.

Nearly three years ago, I was referred to a podiatrist. During the first visit, I was diagnosed with a “Femoral Anteversion”, a congenital disorder in which the femur becomes twisted and the hip ball-and-socket joint does not sit correctly. Although it is a disorder I’ve had possibly since I was in the womb, the imbalance of my feet played heavily on my hip, only aggravating the disorder. You can see in this picture, how the the “ball” of the “ball and socket”  joint is rotated compared to that on the left.

I now have frequent appointments to have my legs, from hips to toes, manipulated and mobilized. To put it bluntly, I lie on the plinth and hold onto the sides while my feet are cracked and bent in mysterious ways and the rest of my joints are pulled,pushed, popped and cracked. The podiatrist also discovered numerous tiny fractures in my past x-rays and tears in the large tendon in my foot, which was in danger of rupturing at some point in the future. I can now wear heels, I can train without pain and swelling.

Unfortunately, the diagnosis was too late. I wish it had been made six years ago as I never reached my peak performance.

 Coping with injury

As I said at the beginning, it’s not only physical pain the gymnast has to cope with, but emotional pain too. Having to retire as a practicing gymnast made me feel extremely down and disheartened. I took a few weeks out to get myself together. It always feels odd coming into the gym when injured, everyone’s looking at you and you’re looking back, watching your team mates train and achieve new moves, all the while thinking, “I hope she doesn’t get better than me”.

The emotional pain is tough. The one place I would go to escape everything was where the problem stirred from.  There is a strong temptation to feel sorry for yourself, thinking that the injury wasn’t your fault. However, Gymnastics isn’t a team or contact sport – you can’t simply blame someone else for, say, a bad tackle. You know that your technicalities were incorrect and are now suffering the consequences.

 Injury is a very tough thing to get through and to get over. When returning after injury there is the frustration that you have to be very careful as your body is vulnerable. There is also the terrible psychological factor that it may take many gymnasts weeks, months or longer to perform the same move that caused the injury. It’s a dangerous sport but well worth  it for the thrills

Part 1

Being injured is a terrible event in any athlete’s career.  One injury can jeopardise some-one’s progression in the sport or even mark the end of their career.  In gymnastics, it is so easy to get hurt. The simplest deviation of a body line can inadvertently cause great harm.

Types of Injuries

There are the obvious types of injuries; muscle strains and tears and broken bones.  There are also injuries that develop over a period of time (Osgood Schlatters disease for example, which occurs from a combination of factors such as repetitive jumping ) and much more serious conditions such as paralysis from a high fall, though thankfully this is rare.  

As well as the physical sensation of pain, the gymnast has to cope with the emotional effects of unwanted downtime while the injury heals.  In a sport like gymnastics, which emphasises adventurousness and includes the use of different types of equipment, participants are bound to become injured at some point during their career.

A personal recap

During my years as a competitive gymnast, I experienced my fair share of injuries.  Three of them in particular, come to mind. Surprisingly, the simplest and seemingly most innocuous one has caused the most long-term damage.

The Flyaway Incident 

At age eleven, I was performing a tucked flyway on the A Bars.  For the uninitiated, this is essentially swinging off the bar and doing a mid-air somersault. It may sound pretty simple, just a matter of letting go but this is not the case.

For a flyaway, you must have the right entry swing into it, otherwise it will be slow which will slow down the rotation mid air, causing you to rotate slower and to land on your face. However, going too fast, perhaps from a fast handstand position and not being able to control your body will essentially mean that you may over-rotate on the late release, landing on your ass or, worse still, what happened to me. The correct body shape is essential. Ideally, you should go from a straight out handstand position, to meet the bar horizontally in a dish shape  and then tuck in and release.  

In my case, I swung too fast, in control of my body but not controlling my height and not having any spacial awareness that day. I over-rotated, not in the normal sense, but back up onto the bar, bouncing my neck off it and landing in a heap on the floor, with all of my weight on my neck. 

I don’t remember it too well apart from thinking that it was so cool that I’d managed to swing up so high but my concerned coaches rushed to my side, checking my breathing and seeing if I was conscious.  I didn’t want an ambulance called, for some reason I’ve always had this awareness of my body that I know when something is seriously wrong so I asked for my parents to be called. They knew me well enough to know to let me go with my gut instinct and allowed my parents to make the final decision.  They took me to our brilliant physiotherapist and with some cryotherapy and soft tissue work, I was fine and back to training within two weeks. Luckily, I’ve had no long term damage to my neck.

The Beam Flip

I missed the placement of one of my hands when performing a back flip on  the beam. I landed heavily, with one shoulder on the edge of the beam. It was instantly swollen and bruised. I was out of training for three weeks before I was able to return. I am reminded of this injury every day when I look at or touch my shoulder.  Although not obvious to the untrained eye, my right trapezius muscle has not developed as much as my left, thus leaving me with lob-sided shoulders and a permanent lump. It isn’t painful but it bothers me, I know it’s there and will always be there to remind me of that day and the pain I endured whilst trying to sleep and do other daily activities.

Part 2 to follow soon!