Xu Zi Yang2014-02-05 09:41:36 From：New Sports
From the May issue of New Sports, 2013, dictated by Bob Chen, Written by Bai Qiang
Cast off Three Days after the Surgery
This year, before the Chinese Festival, the main guard of the National Youth Basketball team Xu Ziyang came urgently to my studio. It turned out that he had a serious ankle sprain last year, and his ankle was injured. In this regard, the team had taken a conservative therapy approach. However, two months had passed, the condition not only did not improve, but the Jiangsu fellow could not even participate in normal training. Seeing the March Basketball preliminary matches of the National Sports Meet were approaching, as the core of the Jiangsu Team, Xu Ziyang’s feeling cannot easily be imagined. He had only one request from us, which was to recover fully in the shortest possible time.
But things were not as simple as they appeared. After careful examination, we discovered there was a one-centimeter long free bone within his ankle, which had caused his constant pain and movement dysfunction. We immediately and decisively recommended him to go to the Beijing University Third hospital, and asked the ankle specialist Hu Yuelin to operate on him.
The operation was very successful, but it only left him three weeks to recover. In the eyes of the medical experts, it is impossible to reach the goal of training and participating in the games in such short time. According to the conventional concept, the cast put on an ankle after surgery requires four weeks of time, and patients need at least three months of rest before participating in exercises.
Hope and pressure were once again laid on our shoulders. We decided to use the passive traditional rehabilitation concepts and practice of mainly resting after the operation, and then boldly implemented the active rehabilitation concepts and means of mainly movement.
When Xu Ziyang came into our studio on crutches three days after the operation, the first thing we did was to take his cast off his ankle, and performed inflammation elimination and treatment. Then, we had him sit down and do exercises in which he extended his toes out, and pulled them back. Even though this small move made him suffer in deep pain, and he could not complete the full magnitude, he was still clenching his teeth carrying on. After that, we asked him to try to walk around...
During these movements that seemed to make us worried and anxious, there were promising results appearing on Xu Ziyang’s body. On the fourth day, he could stand to support his own bodyweight. On the fifth day, he could walk around freely. On the seventh day, he got rid of the crutches. On the twelfth day, he could run...
Once the person can walk, he can do exercise with more strength and stability. So, at the right moment we let him do one foot elevation training with weights. Two weeks later, we asked him to simulate the requirements of basketball moves, and did special functional training, even adding on jumping, quick stops, sharp turns, quick starts and other high-risk exercises. Xu Ziyang, after all, had not properly trained for three months, so we had simultaneously to work at his ankle injury recovery, and intensify his specialized physical stamina.
Three weeks later, Xu Ziyang returned to his team. After just one week of training with his team, he appeared in the arena of the National Sports Meet, and was tested against high intensity and highly competitive daily games. In the decisive game to enter the finals, Xu Ziyang played three and half quarters, and scored 19 points on his own, and assisted 15 points. Facing the tall center, he forced his way through, and even dunked the ball, and looked not at all like someone who just had an operation. The Jiangsu Team won the game finally. After several months of pain and suffering, anguish and doubt, Xu Ziyang’s heart was in a turmoil of emotions, and he threw his arms around his father and cried.
I am giving you the example of Xu Ziyang not to show that we can use certain specific rehabilitation methods during an emergency phase, and also not to show off that our three-week work is better than three-months of recovery, but to show a widely recognized modern scientific concept in developed countries, which indicates that post-operation rehabilitation of sports injuries cannot be just resting and passive recovery; it should be involved with sports activities as early as possible and take the initiative to recover.
A large number of examples show that when traditional practices are used, several months of resting after surgeries, due to a long time being bandaged and in a cast, the injured parts could have many complications, such as swelling of joints, tissue adhesion, muscular dystrophy, decreased articulation range of motion, or even loss of articulation moving function, and so on. This kind of scenario can often be seen, after the cast is removed from a limb, when the patient cannot even do normal flexion movements. Therefore, the first thing they need to do is to get rid of the adhesion of joint soft tissues. The method of this is to press open the joint with force, and this “breaking the joint” looks simple, but in reality, it is both time consuming and extremely painful, and patients often cannot help but scream. In order to avoid this painful procedure, some people even give up the operation all together. Moreover, during this period, if the rehabilitation methods are not used correctly, it will prolong the rehabilitation period, and in real life, there are a lot of people who cannot restore their normal joint function for as long as a year or two.
Modern rehabilitation concepts and means can effectively prevent these consequences brought on by traditional practices. It suggests to do joint activity training at the right moment before the soft tissue adhesion after the surgery, which maintains muscle activity, and lays a good foundation for resuming normal activities and sports in the future. In the mean time, it also saves time, and improves the recovery efficiency.
In many counties, these concepts and methods are not only being used in sports, but are also being used in people’s daily rehabilitation. In hospitals in the United States, not only is every department supplied with rehabilitation therapists, but also active rehabilitation activities start soon after the patients are returned to their rooms from the operation room. For example, after the joint replacement surgery, the rehabilitation therapist would place a “Continuous Passive Motion Machine” under the affected area of a patient to help them move, in order to avoid soft tissue adhesion of the injured part. Even for those who are dying, the therapists still go there to help them do various kinds of activities, move their stiff joints to prevent thrombosis. In their view, rehabilitation is exercise. In order to recover quickly, one must exercise early.
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