wrist sprain?

[tweakxc03]

Rip:

Searching on the forums didn't return too much on this. About 4 weeks ago I jammed the fuck out of my wrist doing power cleans. The weight was too heavy and bar got out in front of me a little bit and I couldn't get down under it fast enough with my elbows up. I went into the catch in basically a full front squat, but as the bar came down, my right elbow jammed into my quad, bending my wrist backward pretty hard.

Luckily, this happened right before I left for my wedding/honeymoon, so I haven't been to the gym since. I'm back now, but even after 4 weeks of rest, my wrist is still bothering me. I am planning to visit a chiropractor, ice, fish oil, etc...

So, my questions for you:
1. How do you work around an injury like this that can get re-aggravated from lifting?
2. Should I try wrapping or taping my wrists? I would kind of feel like a dipshit benching less than 230 with wrist wraps.

Thanks

[Mark Rippetoe]

Did you get an X-ray? Many wrists have been fractured this way. It's a bit late now, but it would be interesting to know.

[Tamara Reynolds]

Do not go see a chiropractor. Go to see an orthopedic surgeon, preferably one in sports med. You need an x-ray to see if you have a wrist fracture, but they will also probably want to do an MRI if they know what they are talking about. If you fracture your scaphoid, it is often not visible on an x-ray. Also, if you tore a ligament, it will not be visible on the x-ray.

You've waited 4 weeks, so you might be fucked, but go see the doctor. I say this as someone who had a partially torn radial collateral ligament and severe wrist contusions last year due to a missed clean. It was quite a long rehab process and the pain from the contusions literally took over 6 months to go away.

This is one of the reasons I am so anal about people fixing their rack positions on power cleans. Yes, things can go wrong in weird ways (in my case, my rack was fine, but I fell back and couldn't dump the bar before my elbow hit my thigh). Slamming your elbow into your leg on a clean can be a very very bad thing. It has ended weightlifting careers because tiny wrist bones sometimes don't heal well.

[Jonathon Sullivan]

What Rip and Tamara said. Wrist injuries, even apparently "benign" ones, have the potential for badness. ED docs think: "Wrist hurt=wrist broken" until proven otherwise. Seek care.

[tweakxc03]

well fuck. i'll schedule an appointment on monday for xray. so i guess no benching/pressing, definitely no PCs until this is healed?

assuming it is just a sprain, how would i program around it while it heals?

[Mark Rippetoe]

Sprains don't last this long. Let's see what the test shows. In general, don't hurt your wrist again, but train everything you can that doesn't hurt.

[Will Morris]

Fracture, Keinbock's Disease, Preiser's Disease, TFCC tear.....etc, etc, etc. Exactly what Dr. Sullivan said, wrist hurt = really bad until proven otherwise.

If it is just a sprain, or other soft tissue injury (after you are cleared of something bad from the physician) the rehab process is going to be essentially what you are doing now. Work with weights you can tolerate without causing pain, and progress as you can tolerate. Ligamentous injuries heal best when they are subjected to progressive stress. Conversely, the healing process is essentially useless in a ligament injury that is treated with rest.

[tweakxc03]

No breaks in X-ray and other diagnostic tests for ligament tears were basically normal. Doc says it's just a sprain, but could take another 6-8 weeks to heal completely. Suggested I don't load the wrist in any extension (so no bench, press, or PCs) until things are healed up completely. If it's not better in 6 weeks, then he wants to do an MRI, but most likely it will just continue healing up.

So, what I can do: SQ, DL, rows, chins/pullups, curls, shrugs, maybe lying triceps extensions? Not much I can think of to replace bench/press. Any thoughts on how to program around this would be greatly appreciated.

[Mark Rippetoe]

I would expect that a fractured wrist 5 weeks post-injury would be very hard to see on a conventional x-ray. Did the Doc grade the sprain? If the wrist is not better in 6 more weeks, he wants to diagnose the injury. But he is correct in that, unless you have wrist cancer, it will continue to heal. In a correctly-gripped press/bench press, the wrist is not loaded in extension. There is no way to do a LT Ext without loading the wrist in extension. You can do anything that doesn't hurt the wrist.

[tweakxc03]

He didn't really give me a specific grade for the sprain. He did say the same thing, that there could be small compression fractures that don't show up on the x-ray. Thanks very much for your help.