UKC

I've partially ruptured my bicep tendon,it's rubbish!!! The rupture is at present only small but very painful.

I'm having physio on it at the moment but it doesn't really seem to be helping. She says the only thing I can really do is rest it for upto 6 months but I really don't want to do that, no climbing for 6 MONTHS!!!

Has anyone else had this problem and know where to find good supports. I've seen photo's of people wearing neoprene support tubes that cover most of the upper forearm and bicep but can't find them anywhere on the net.

I currently wear a velcro support which although usefull is not ideal.

Any help would be great.

Cheers 'injured' Steve :/

In reply to TheNorthernOne:

rest it properly. climbing in sixth months is better than no more climbing ever.

In reply to fhyndoh: The alternative is hardly no climbing ever. Just go ahead and rupture the whole thing. Then hit up a surgeon and have a biceps tenodesis, do your physio and hey presto, you'll be climbing again in 3-4 months and have a fully repaired tendon grafted onto a nice new spot. Happened like this to a friend of mine just recently.

In reply to TheNorthernOne:

www.athlon.com.au/
www.shoulderdoc.co.uk
may give food for thought. I did this, including brachialis and an avulsion of the long biceps tendon at top. 9 months before fully repaired but I'm sure yours isn't so bad and that time could be improved on substantially. Complete inactivity after acute phase has settled is not advised. A month or two then start ticking classic diffs and work up from there.
you could ask for advice on UKB, but what you really need is qualified expert advice- see a sports physio/osteo.
Good luck

In reply to TheNorthernOne: how do you know you ruptured it? go see another physio

In reply to Anonymous: I'm pretty sure the physio has it right.From what I've researched on the net etc all the symptoms are pointing to a partial rupture. You can actually see where the muscle fibres have peeled from the tendon and are starting to form a bulge on the long head of the bicep.

I'm pretty resounded to rest now as thing have gotten worse over the last few days. Can still climb easy routes but it's a bit of a wounder as my training was going well

If anyone was wondering how this was brought on the physio thinks it was training one-arm pull ups and lock-offs. I was doing a training session on them once per week and although the training paid off in terms of pushing grades and strength gains the massive stress put on the bicep tendon resulted in the partial rupture.

I'm a fair size fella at 12 stone so my advice to anyone doing this kind of training is when you notice pain don't ignore it!!! I did and look what happened. I'm lucky that my phsiotherapy is free through the army but for a civvy this could be a very expensive injury!

In reply to TheNorthernOne: You may want to post a bit more thoroughly about this as its something that seems to be aimed for quite a lot (the one armed chinup).

Get well soon.
Dave

In reply to TheNorthernOne: I've not had that particular injury, but I've had lots of others. My advice is to follow the advice you've already had and rest it for a good while. Then follow a period of rehab under the advice of your physio. DO NOT BE IMPATIENT - YOU WILL REGRET IT! You are only 26 - you've got loads of time. People told me stuff like that and I ignored them, but I was an idiot. I hope you're not!

Good luck with it, I hope it sorts out asap.

In reply to dave frost: Well the one-armed chin-up is one of those goals that alot of people have. I started practicing them with a rope on the bar for my other hand,as each training session progressed I used the rope less and less untill eventually, ONE ARMER!!!

The problem that I think caused the injury is the initial explosive move from locked out arm to begin moving the body up. This is a very fast twitch movement and places alot of stress on the bicep tendon.

I was following an old training programme for chin-ups that was printed in Climber magazine a few years ago. This programme involved doing lock-offs etc as well as one-armers and various other chin-up exercises for around an hour. The strain placed on the muscles and tendons is obviously massive especially once you progress to the more advanced things like wieghted lock-offs.

I felt pain in the lower bicep area but just thought I'd pulled the muscle a little. Being a typical squaddie I just muttered to myself about stop being weak and cracked on. It was about 2 months before the pain became so bad training was just no longer an option,2 weeks before I went to Hueco Tanks!

Don't ignore pain!!! And probably leave one-armed chin-ups to the proffessionals lol.