I was just thinking the same thing yesterday about wrist supports, as comparable to grips on bars.
A number of good coaches seem to frown upon the (over)use of wrist guards, due to the belief that the wrists run the risk of becoming over-reliant upon them; and not be given enough adequate stress to strengthen and adapt to the forces placed upon them.
However, I've started coming around to the belief that some things in gymnastics- like yurchenko vaults, pommel horse, and excessive tumbling- places so much "unnaturally" excessive force (vaulting) or overusage (i.e., 100 circles in a row on horse) upon the wrists, that it's just inviting injury.
Like Retrosi and Geddert, why not protect the wrists
before they become injured? Not after. So what if the gymnast is dependent upon wrist supports the rest of their competitive career? Where else in life are they going to subject their wrists to the amount of force that they do during a yurchenko? One bad angle, and those wrists are placed in great hyper-extension with a tremendous amount of force generated behind them.
Like vault landings on hard surfaces, coaches might take into consideration on limiting the amount of repetition. Like saving wear and tear on the knees and ankles, we should be preserving our wrists as much as possible, for longevity in workouts. Landings are done on softer surfaces to increase amount of repetition; why not the same for donning on wrist supports, after a certain number of reps?
Hybrid Perspective:
Wrist pain is one of the most common issues gymnasts and coaches deal
with within the sport. The majority of the wrist problems that athletes
complain about are wrist extension based (back of the hand moving
upward), and are usually localized to the dorsal aspect (back of the
palm/wrist) of the wrist joint. For this week, I wanted to offer some
insight into the topic and offer advice on how to manage/prevent wrist
pain with yourself or your athletes.
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This is an important topic to understand because of its high frequency
in gymnastics, and potential for progressive injury when not addressed
properly. Due to a variety of unique aspects to the sport (which I will
go into below) and the structure of the wrist joint, many athletes
develop nagging pains in their wrist. The pain is most commonly
experienced during weight-bearing skills like handstands, tumbling,
vaulting, and many other skills. There is some biomechanical research
models to suggest that forces up to 2.5x an athletes body weight can be
loaded through the wrist during some gymanstics skills, and up to 5x
during heavy tumbling/vaulting. This number most likely dramatically
increases when shallow tumbling angles or uneven weight bearing occurs
on some skills. Coaches and athletes must be aware of the fact that if
left unaddressed, overuse may progress to a variety of problems like
tendonitis, bone bruising, ligamentous damage, possible growth plate
irritation, scar tissue build up, and possible stress fractures. A very
large number of athletes simply “push through the pain” not knowing that
they may be causing some big problems down the road. I will explain
some basic anatomy concepts for understanding, outline some reasons why a
gymnast may develop wrist pain, and offer some techniques athletes can
utilize to possibly manage/combat their problems.
Read the rest.
One of my concerns as a coach is in avoiding doing things that can damage the growth plates of young athletes.
I knew I had written a bit of my thoughts on this topic before and found the following unpublished post (I thought I had published, but it remained in draft form).
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*Following drafted 6/9/2014, mistakenly unpublished*
Tiger Paws seem to be the most popular amongst gymnasts. Less well-known and advertised seem to be the
Ezy ProBrace. Wade mentioned he favors those over Tiger Paws (Tiger paws prevent the wrists to go into hyperextension by acting as brace; the Ezy ProBrace elevates the palm but still allows freedom for hyperextension, to occur, and therefore the wrists still have an opportunity to strengthen by dealing with the stresses).
Back in the late 80s former Bruin gymnast and medical student Luc Teurlings brought in the prototypes for the Ezy ProBrace, which he designed. Everyone on the team was given a pair to test out and offer feedback. After all these years, I still have mine.
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| On the left: Ezy ProBrace prototype. Right: My favorite wrist support acquired at USGTC in Irvine |
A number of coaches discourage their gymnasts from using Tiger Paws, for fear of developing over-reliance and "brittle" wrists.
Coaches like John Geddert suggest wearing wrist supports during Yurchenko training as a prevention safeguard
before wrists potentially incur injury.
I have been leaning toward not being overly concerned about gymnast reliance on wrist supports. The risk of developing overuse injury in the sport of artistic gymnastics seems to be pretty high.
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Labels: sports medicine
