SHOULDERING ON
With Cooper Cronk racing the clock for the NRL grand final, the Bulletin speaks to Bond University’s Associate Professor of Exercise and Sports Science, Dr Justin Keogh
SHOULDER INJURIES
“The shoulder is one of the worst if not the worst joints in terms of mobility strength. Because you move it through such a large range of motion, it is really difficult to supply lots of support, because then you have to limit range.
“That mechanical support is somewhat minimal to what it can provide the athlete. The demands of rugby league in terms of tackling, passing, running, it is very likely it will be aggravated multiple times through the game. Each contact will make it worse and could cause more damage.
“You need to be able to lift your arm, and that is seriously in question with Cooper Cronk.”
SHOULDER STRAPPING
“There are ways you can strap it but the support will be questionable, just by the nature of the range of movement the shoulder needs to operate. As the game progresses and you start sweating, the elasticity of that tape and the support it provides reduces. It doesn’t hold that position effectively throughout 80 minutes.
“In a normal tackling position, especially for someone the size of Cronk, the arm is elevated above the shoulder, it is difficult to provide support without limiting range, especially in that position.
“It is going to be very awkward in terms of pain and discomfort. These guys live with pain throughout games but it is going to be tough for him. I don’t think it will be fun.”
THE WEEK AHEAD
“They’ll be doing everything they possibly can to get him ready but based on what we saw in that second half, if he does play, it is incredibly unlikely that he’ll be close to 100 per cent.
“The big challenge is trying to regain pain-free strength and range of motion. Any time a structure gets injured, the body part that is injured will lock up. For him to regain that movement those tissues need to regenerate in a week.
“For that to happen you need to apply some mechanical stress on those tissues to realign but they also need time to rest to recover.
“If the physio recommends doing something five times a day, you can potentially do more damage to the tissues if you try to do more than the recommendation, because they won’t have time to recover.
“They won’t be able to test Cooper before the final at risk of doing more damage or another injury.”
HOW CRONK WILL PREPARE
“Cronk will be doing a lot of manual therapy, stretching, resistance work to help those muscle fibres realign.
“The challenge is how much massage, stretching and resistance training you can give someone, while giving them time to recover.
“Often an athlete will do rehab in normal sleeping times, so he might forgo some sleep to get extra sessions in but obviously sleep is a great part of the recovery process, so it is a bit unknown if that is a positive thing to do.
“These injuries are quite unique. They’ll be making clinical decisions on the fly based on the feedback he’s giving them. The program to get him to recover will be very minute and could change every hour.
“If they were to write up a paper on what they did this week to try to aid Cooper, it would be really interesting reading for the sport medicine community.”
HYPERBARIC CHAMBERS
“The evidence base for hyperbaric chambers isn’t overly strong,but if there is even a 1 per cent improvement per session, they’ll definitely take that. The cryotherapy probably has even less evidence about effectiveness. There might be a benefit but it hasn’t been proven in studies yet.”