Is anyone familiar with this condition? One of our rugby guys has this. It doesn’t bother him too much when he is sprinting or playing the game, although there is sufficient pain to prevent him from performing most weight training exercises for the lower body as well as any kind of goal kicking.
I have read some articles on the internet regarding this condition, although it would really help if anyone who is familiar with this could let me know some specific strengthening/rehab work that we could do. Unfortunately complete time off from playing is not really an option for this guy right now as he has a national provincial championship season coming up which is very important for his career.
This really sucks. I suffered from it for over 2 years, taking time off, rehab, etc. Unfortunally, the only thing that helped was surgery. I have 3 friends that had the same thing and they all had surgery to recover from it.
It may not require surgury. You need to find a specialist with experience treating this condition. sometimes a small amt of cortisone is injected into the area (makes you want to cross your legs, doesn’t it?)
That is true Charlie. I had 2 cortisone shots in my pubic sympahsis (spelling??). It isn’t very comfortable to have someone give you a shot there. My experience was that the cortisone just masked the pain. There were times that I couldn’t role over in bed without grabbing my leg and pulling it over. I feel bad for this guy. It’s a tough injury to fix.
The shot isn’t supposed to be to allow continued comp on it! The idea is to settle the inflammation a bit sooner, but, you still have to stay off it for a considerable time. Pool work is a good substitute.
I have a couple of other questions regarding this:
Is it normal for people with osteitis pubis to have pain with most lower body weight training movements? I know with a severe case of this, the athlete will feel pain with almost any movement, but in the case of this guy he is able to do quite a lot of speed training (not prescribed by me, but I assume this is mostly short accel work). I just thought that possibly the speed work is actually doing him more damage than resistance work in the gym due to the impact from foot contact. What kind of strengthening work can he perform for his lower body that won’t make his condition worse?
Although ideally he should probably take complete time off from training and playing, he would definately not be receptive to this (at least until after the season is over).
Also, I read that proper nutrition can help speed recovery, although the article did not go into much more detail than this. Would this mean increasing calcium intake? Protein? Any supplements which may help?
Sports hernia, groin strains etc. are all closely related and often confused and without accurate MRI and clinical diagnosis they can be mistreated for along time.
With most of these injuries the athlete can finish a season with the help of a physio and opt for surgery in the post season. They often can complete games etc. but with pain however the following days can be very painful.
As Charlie reccomended, pool work is one of the best methods for an athlete to train through the movements, reduce inflamation and not force the groin unnecessarily.
The constant icing around ‘the family jewels’ is not pleasant either!
It’s origins vary. It can come from simple lack of flexibility and poor warm-up to overuse and overtraining and constant kicking and running in very wet muddy conditions, but the most common causes relate to the athlete being possibly overweight, poor posture a weak core and weakened tranverse abdominus muscle group.