http://www.sherdog.com/news/news/Doctor-PCL-Injuries-in-MMA-Often-Due-to-Shooting-In-48025 In an interview with Dr. Jonathan Gelber from FightMedicine.net (I'm so glad to know that that's a thing), he suggested that injuries to the PCL were due to shooting in. While he seems to have some solid reasoning behind it- as far as I can tell anyway, not being a doctor myself- his statements sound like a "best guess" instead of thorough research. My thought is that if it were easy to injure the PCL during a shot, we'd see a lot of it in amateur wrestling. I personally don't have the numbers to know if that happens or not. Anyone with more wrestling experience want to chime in? Further, the "MMA shot" is generally a little different than your standard wrestling shot. Most of the best TD artists in MMA pike at the hips and run with their feet instead of hitting a knee. Demo by Josh Koscheck- [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrIuft3czRo"]MMA Fighter Josh Koshcheck: Double Leg Takedown for MMAWeekly.com - MMA Weekly News - YouTube[/ame] GSP TD highlight (warning for language in the intro)- [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cgrWPXLeOc"]Georges St. Pierre Takedown Highlight - YouTube[/ame] Randy Couture highlight- [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7bM1CH0Msg"]Randy Couture Highlights - YouTube[/ame] In fact, the only guys I can think of who consistantly band then knee when penetrating are Sherk and Evans. Thoughts?
It's interesting that this doc has come to this conclusion. I'm not saying that you can't hurt your PCL in some way doing MMA but if you think about it, when you hit your leg on the ground (during a shoot) it is your knee cap that hits and not your shin. The ''dashboard'' type injury is when the shin hits the dash in an accident and the PCL gets torn. Can't quite see how a shoot can replicate this type of injury mechanism. Some people would also keep the foot on the ball making it even hard to get a backwards force through the shin. I just tried to get my shin to hit the ground going through the motions and I couldn't get it to happen (I am in my office seeing patients so I have to be quiet :' P ). Interesting that they blamed the shoot.. maybe they need to look harder and see if there isn't something else at fault for the PCL injuries! Just sayin' LFD
That's sort of why I'm putting it out there. I don't know enough about medicine or about the state of injuries in wrestling to draw a conclusion. On the one hand, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me (again, I'd expect to have heard about countless PCL injuries in wrestling if hitting the knee was a big cause of it), but I'm not a doctor, and he is. Is this a thing? I have to wonder. If it's a big enough risk, it would certainly change how I train for grappling-only comps.
Addenum... A quick review of articles in Pubmed and Google Scholar showed that knee injuries were not uncommon in wrestling but there was little mention of PCL injuries. Articles that spoke of PCL damage related it to forced knee flexion with the shin internally rotated. It seemed that injuries were more commonly occurring to the defending athlete rather than the person doing the shooting. ''The most frequent injuries were prepatellar bursitis, lateral and medial sprains, and lateral and medial meniscal tears. We noted a relatively higher rate of lateral versus medial meniscal tears compared to other sports and a somewhat common presentation of a meniscal tear resulting from minimal trauma. The lead leg was injured most often. The takedown was the most frequent situation where any injury occurred. Defensive wrestlers appeared to be at higher risk during takedowns. The wrestler "underneath" was also injured more often. Compliance correlated with decreased recurrence of injury. Approximately 50% of wrestlers were found to be noncompliant with medical recommendations. Junior varsity wrestlers lost significantly more time than varsity wrestlers with equivalent injuries. There was no correlation of injury rate with weight class, period of match, timing in practice, or years of experience.'' Am J Sports Med. 1986 Jan-Feb;14(1):55-66. Patterns of knee injuries in wrestling: a six year study. Wroble RR, Mysnyk MC, Foster DT, Albright JP. ''Two cases of isolated injury to the posterior cruciate ligament of the knee are presented. These injuries both occurred in elite wrestlers, members of the Canadian Pan American Team. The mechanism of injury was identical in both cases--the ligament rupture being a result of forced flexion with combined internal rotation of the tibia on femur'' Can J Appl Sport Sci. 1986 Dec;11(4):173-7. Posterior cruciate ligament tears in wrestlers. Stanish WD, Rubinovich M, Armason T, Lapenskie G. ''... The most commonly injured areas were the shoulder (24%) and knee (17%). Injured wrestlers were an average of 5 months older and had a 32% higher experience level than noninjured wrestlers. ...The majority of injuries occurred in practice (63%), although the injury rate was higher in match competitions. Sixty-eight percent of practice injuries occurred during hard wrestling, 23% during drills, and 9% during conditioning. The most common wrestling situation resulting in injury was the takedown position (68%). Our results show that the older and more experienced wrestler may be at greater risk of injury. Hard wrestling during practice and the takedown position resulted in the highest occurrence of injury.'' Am J Sports Med. 2000 Jul-Aug;28(4):509-15. A prospective study of high school wrestling injuries. Pasque CB, Hewett TE. LFD
That's very helpful, thanks for taking the time to research that. Can you clarify what "internal rotation" is? I assume it means that the toes are rotated to point at the opposite leg (ex: right foot is rotated so the toes point to the left leg)?
No problem :' ) I was interested in whether these sort of injuries happened to wrestlers or not as well. I would have thought this type of injury (PCL) might be more common in arts that used leg locks than in simple wrestling considering the injury mechanism. I think that people writing articles about the dangers of a sport should put in a bit of time doing the sport or at least training a bit to better understand the mechanics of injury as they apply rather than theorizing. When a catastrophic injury happens it's important to figure out if it is a fluke or something that might really be a danger to an average player. Internal rotation means rotated towards the mid-line. In the knee, if the tibia (shin bone) is turned towards the mid-line then your foot would be turned towards the opposite foot. Hope that is clearer. LFD
