Men Wrist overuse injury

[Dahlialover]

Can you white lie into getting him to participate in other activities?

I.e - 'doctor suggested swimming to maintain strength, lets try two weeks'

I signed him up for junior swim team right away after this happened. I found a water resistant brace that worked great. Unfortunately, he quit after two weeks. He hates being cold.

I also bought a used recumbent exercise bike which he enjoys quite a bit. The whole family enjoys using it, so that’s a positive.

 

[Dahlialover]

It has been almost 6 months and my son is finally starting his return. He’s attending two full practices per week. He’s able to practice high bar and rings fairly normally. He’s still hands-free on vault and floor. He can’t tolerate planche positions yet, which includes swing handstands of pbars, so he’s limited to pit swings and under bar swings. He’s not expected to begin pommel again for many months.

Overall, we expect it to take a year for him to get back to where he was when he got hurt. I’m just praying he can avoid the injury spiral that is so common at our gym. We’ve had lots of boys go out for extended periods due to overuse injuries and as soon as they get back, they injure something else. It’s just one injury after another until they quit. I’m trying to do what I can to help my son avoid that fate but he’s not diligent about doing his PT. We’ll see how this next year goes.

 

[InMyGymMomEra]

It has been almost 6 months and my son is finally starting his return. He’s attending two full practices per week. He’s able to practice high bar and rings fairly normally. He’s still hands-free on vault and floor. He can’t tolerate planche positions yet, which includes swing handstands of pbars, so he’s limited to pit swings and under bar swings. He’s not expected to begin pommel again for many months.

Overall, we expect it to take a year for him to get back to where he was when he got hurt. I’m just praying he can avoid the injury spiral that is so common at our gym. We’ve had lots of boys go out for extended periods due to overuse injuries and as soon as they get back, they injure something else. It’s just one injury after another until they quit. I’m trying to do what I can to help my son avoid that fate but he’s not diligent about doing his PT. We’ll see how this next year goes.

Sending best wishes and healing thoughts to your son!! So wonderful to hear he’s back to his practices!!

 

[Dahlialover]

Sending best wishes and healing thoughts to your son!! So wonderful to hear he’s back to his practices!!

Thank you!

 

[gymmom_1234]

Sending good thoughts he continues to improve! Is he doing any weight training to strengthen his muscles and support the bones as he grows?

 

[Dahlialover]

Sending good thoughts he continues to improve! Is he doing any weight training to strengthen his muscles and support the bones as he grows?

He’s 10, so no weight training yet. He has a list of PT exercises he’s supposed to do but he’s not very interested in doing them. Our gym does not emphasize physical preparation. I’ve read that physical preparation should be 30% of training time, but it’s closer to 10% at our gym (sometimes less). Some years they go on a conditioning kick in the summer, but it’s very sporadic. The high schoolers take weightlifting for PE to compensate. It’s not an ideal arrangement.

 

[gymmom_1234]

Interesting! My son started weight training at age 8 with age appropriate weights and the support of his pediatrician. There’s data to support that it’s safe and beneficial when done correctly. We do it outside of gymnastics.

 

[Gymnast_13]

Also, is it possible for boys to train 20 hours per week without getting serious overuse injuries? It doesn’t seem possible at our gym! Gymnast wrist, elbow avulsion fractures, OCD—it seems like every tween or young teen in level 6 or above is losing at least a season to upper extremity overuse injuries. Watching his teammates push through the pain and then end up with serious overuse injuries requiring casting and extensive rehab has made me very nervous about allowing my son to train through wrist pain.

I am so sorry about your son and teammates injuries. I think it depends on the gym because if the coaches are doing their part in making sure the gymnasts have great form so they don't get hurt or giving the a break to work on another skill so that way they don't have overuse injuries as often. One of my guy friends who's a lv.8 (training 9) boys gymnast hasn't suffered many injuries so I could ask him how he does that. I hope this helped.

 

[Dahlialover]

I am so sorry about your son and teammates injuries. I think it depends on the gym because if the coaches are doing their part in making sure the gymnasts have great form so they don't get hurt or giving the a break to work on another skill so that way they don't have overuse injuries as often. One of my guy friends who's a lv.8 (training 9) boys gymnast hasn't suffered many injuries so I could ask him how he does that. I hope this helped.

I think a big issue at our gym is that the boys get very limited access to the floor and the vault because they share these apparatuses with 200 girls. Consequently, they end up spending way too much time on the arm events. They rarely even get access to floor space (not even an edge) for warm-up or conditioning. The gym is getting some additional floor space soon and I hope that the boys will be able to use it.

 

[Gymnast_13]

I think a big issue at our gym is that the boys get very limited access to the floor and the vault because they share these apparatuses with 200 girls. Consequently, they end up spending way too much time on the arm events. They rarely even get access to floor space (not even an edge) for warm-up or conditioning. The gym is getting some additional floor space soon and I hope that the boys will be able to use it.

Mmm that's true. At my old gym it was centered alot on WAG go the boys didn't get that much space. We even got rid of their pit high bar for a dismount uneven bars (that was before I joined but around 2 years ago or so). When they need to do dismounts with a bit they just go to another gym.
Talk to the other boy gymnast's parents to see if you guys could push for the boys to get a part of the floor space or that can even be the boys floor and the other one is for the girls or vice versa (preferably the first option tho). Also, see if the gym doesn't mind going to another gym for when the boys need to train floor and vault skills until the time is decided fairly.