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Kettlebell Are high rep C&Js chipping away at the anterior cruciate ligament? (ACL)

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Max.Sehr

Max.Sehr

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Hi All,

first of all i want to make clear that i dont want to accuse any program or the C&J to damage the ACL but rather want to ask a critical question, hear your opinions and experiences on this matter.

So 5 weeks ago i started the C&J program which was published by Pavel at the Strongfirst Article section. Since then i have made good progress and used the single C&J with the 28kg. In addition to the 2 C&J days i practiced S&S on the following day. At week 4 into the program i followed the program and had a deload week with the 20kg and only 2/3 of the previous time. Also, soccer pre-season training started in week 4 which was another reason to deload in this week. Also, i only did C&Js in this week as my general fitness really increased doing these.

However, at the end of the week we had our first match and i tore my ACL during the first half of the game during decceleration from a sprint. So i searched the forum to look for some ACL rehab experiences using the Strongfirst methodology and came upon this quote from Mike Perry:
...Another thing to consider is swing style. You may need more or less knee flexion to take some of the load off of the ACL.
Between 15-30 degrees of knee flexion is where the most amount of shear force is on the ACL ( hence why partial squats are terrible for it ) so you may need to tweak your technique...
Click to expand...
Seeing this i wondered if high rep C&Js may be dangerous if used in combination with track&field sports? Because during the initial dip to propell the KB upward and the decelleration phase where you catch the KB from the top is basically a partial squat in the range of 15-30° right? So we create a lot of shear force on the ACL which may be dangerous if continued repeatedly?
So im very interested to hear some expert opinions on this. Note that im no expert and am just wondering about this.

Kind regards,
Max
 
If your training stresses tissue less than your tissue tolerance, and you have adequate recovery, then your tissue strengthens. If your training overloads your tissue, it breaks down.

So your question is highly individualized.

Really you probably just tore your ACL because you were playing soccer and soccer is known for ACL injuries, whereas weightlifting is not.
 
Of course, it can just happen to be a sport-specific injury!
So my question is basically if for example the C&J increases the risk, especially pre-season and in-season because the knee can't recover sufficiently in combination with track&field sports?
 
Since there’s no good way to establish causation in your case, I would rephrase the question as:

Who, if anyone, has experienced more knee troubles since doing higher volumes of the LCCJ?

To your above question: adding more load to an area that already experiences a lot of load in your sport can be tricky. To know if it increases risk, once again, you’d have to get feedback/data from a large enough group of people who both use the LCCJ and participate in track and field type sports.
 
The forces of deceleration are a major cause of injury.
The forces go somewhere, they have to. A sudden stop v a steady slowing down.
It's a difficult thing to train as most running sports require sudden stops and changes of direction.
A way to train and to prevent injury as put forward by sprint researcher JB Morin is, counter intuitively, to train at max velocity.
That's is to focus only on linear max running speed as you prep your body at maximum force. During games, it is rare that you will hit top speed, so your tissues are exposed to greater forces than they would otherwise be by training high force safely. This means training like a sprinter, not for sport specific sprinting but what sprinters do....Long deceleration. And long rests.
Some really interesting papers. Look him up. He was a sports scientist for top French football clubs.
Not for you now...hope you recover well but maybe worth exploring when ready.
He's very transparent. I've emailed and asked him some direct questions about sprinting...top guy. Very helpful and specialist knowledge direct from the source.
His data supports his hypothesis but its not agreed by everyone.
Good luck.
 
I think the fact that you also did S&S could be a more important factor that any specific lift's characteristics. Doing two programs that are supposed to be self-sufficient tat the same time might create too much stress to recover from.
 
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Soccer or fitbaw as we call it in Scotland annihilates the knees. Every snapped ACL owner I ever met did it playing fitbaw.
 
I injured my knee long time ago and my knee is super sensitive to whatever I do and likes to complain. I do not perform LCCJ in my training, simply because it starts to hurt a little after few sessions. For me this means the LCCJ put some stress on it, or I just do it improperly. However, soccer players tear their ACL all the time - and few of them is doing LCCJ. I think it was a factor in your injury, but by far not the most important one.

Swings are different - when my problematic knee is irritated, then I need to take a few days off even from swings, but I was not able to irritate it with swings only.
 
I've noticed that my knee, and I guess my ACL, feels funky after high rep LCCJ work. Really bums me out because I like LC a lot. I've considered trying a slow negative back to the rack rather than a catch to see how that feels. Hard to tell what the cause is though. BJJ hasn't helped my knee, and I have some old unrelated injuries.
 

Post hoc ergo propter hoc - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Post hoc ergo propter hoc (Latin: 'after this, therefore because of this') is an informal fallacy that states: "Since event Y followed event X, event Y must have been caused by event X." It is often shortened simply to post hoc fallacy. A logical fallacy of the questionable cause variety, it is subtly different from the fallacy cum hoc ergo propter hoc ('with this, therefore because of this'), in which two events occur simultaneously or the chronological ordering is insignificant or unknown.[1]

Post hoc is a particularly tempting error because correlation appears to suggest causality.
Click to expand...

-S-
 
You are absolutely right Steve. As i stated before this could just have happened from playing the Sport itself.
One could also argue that the C&J strengthens the knee and the tissue around the knee when using the right dose, volume and regeneration.
However, my point is that in the short term this may be a factor (among many others) which can increase the risk/probability of an injury when playing sports which are known for their acl injuries.

Also, i do not think that S&S did play a major role because i practiced it for 3 years now and never had any knee problems with this program. I also think that 4 Training days (Mo/Th=C&J, Tu/Fr) before pre-season (pre-season =Mo/Tu=C&J) are a reasonable volume to recover from.

Having said that, it is of course a hypothetical question. Just interested in your opinions...
Kind regards,
Max
 
that's purely anecdotal what I'm going to say, so take it with a grain of salt.
Recently I've been doing some hyperarch training for the plantar fascia. Just myofascial release of the feet and raised heel towel curls. Also started doing some gait training which also emphasizes toe engagement.
Now, I'm instinctively grabbing the floor with my toes while jerking the bell up and all unpleasant sensations I used to feel in my right knee after c&j have disappeared.
 
Pasibrzuch said:
that's purely anecdotal what I'm going to say, so take it with a grain of salt.
Recently I've been doing some hyperarch training for the plantar fascia. Just myofascial release of the feet and raised heel towel curls. Also started doing some gait training which also emphasizes toe engagement.
Now, I'm instinctively grabbing the floor with my toes while jerking the bell up and all unpleasant sensations I used to feel in my right knee after c&j have disappeared.
Click to expand...
The feet are a highly overlooked, yet extremely important, body part when it comes to addressing body issues. That's awesome!
 
@Pasibrzuch, feet are definitely important. I credit figuring out some of my own foot stuff with helping my deadlift 1RM improve.

I've also noticed what I consider to be an odd thing - when I'm resting between sets of swings and wearing a heart rate monitor, if I really solidly plant my feet, something I would have expected to raise my HR, it actually does the opposite. My theory is that when I get my feet right, and I'm resting/recovering, the rest of me actually relaxes _better_.

-S-
 
I think doing any sorts of football, soccer or handball is a bit like wing suit jumping for the knees. Sooner or later you will ruin them. And it is quite hard to fix them once they are broken. I general think that soccer, handball and football is safe when you are under the age of ten. So by saying this I think that clean and jerk has quite little to do with it, and that football has more to do with it.

I have met so many people who are doing heavy weightlifting training while having bad knees. I ask them how they got their bad knees. They always tell me that they got it once they gave into the temptation of playing football or soccer.
 
Steve Freides said:
@Pasibrzuch, feet are definitely important. I credit figuring out some of my own foot stuff with helping my deadlift 1RM improve.

I've also noticed what I consider to be an odd thing - when I'm resting between sets of swings and wearing a heart rate monitor, if I really solidly plant my feet, something I would have expected to raise my HR, it actually does the opposite. My theory is that when I get my feet right, and I'm resting/recovering, the rest of me actually relaxes _better_.

-S-
Click to expand...
This would take me a very long time to get into the details, but I believe this might be because a sense of stable grounding tells the nervous system that things are “safe.” When one is not in good contact with the ground, and not sensing the ground well, the body feels off-balance (like it’s about to fall, more or less) and ends up tightening and bracing. A “defensive” response, if you will. Super interesting and a cool observation you made!
 
A few things here:

1) GS:
If C&J was an issue for this particular knee injury then I would expect to see GS athletes having a rash of ACL injuries and I cannot find any evidence of this.

2) Contributing structures/muscles:
While peak shear is at 15-30 degrees it is also a range where there are many other supporting structures and muscular action.
For example:
"Studies have shown that the ACL provided more than 80% of anterior restraining force from 30° to 90° of knee flexion, while other ligamentous structures such as the medial joint capsule, the iliotibial tract, and the medial and lateral collateral ligaments provided no relevant secondary restraint to this motion [12].
12. Butler DL, Noyes FR, Grood ES (1980) Ligamentous restraints to anterior-posterior drawer in the human knee. A biomechanical study. J Bone Joint Surg Am 62:259–270 [PubMed]"

Biomechanics of the anterior cruciate ligament and ... - NCBI
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Biomechanics of the anterior cruciate ligament and implications for surgical reconstruction

Injury to the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is regarded as critical to the physiological kinematics of the femoral-tibial joint, its disruption eventually causing long-term functional impairment. Both the initial trauma and the pathologic motion pattern ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

So from 30-90-degrees the ACL is more responsible from a ligamentous and supporting structure standpoint but receiving less shear than the 15-30 degree range so it is not as simple as the shear alone. Again at 15-30 degrees there are many other structures and muscular action assisting with that increased shear.

And the load on the structures in C&J is {bodyweight + the KB + the energy in the dip} but the load in running and stopping (and running downhill etc.) can easily reach 10x BW so it is hard to equate the load of C&J with the 10x or so load of running/planting.

3) Ankle mobility
Ankle mobility and being able to efficiently use the ankle in the C&J (and every running, squatting etc. motion) is key.
If you have restricted ankle mobility then there will be compensation and stress spread through the system.

4) ACL mechanism of injury and training
Your mechanism of injury (planting to stop or change direction) is the classic mechanism of injury for an ACL.

Building up training load (soccer/running) and training some deceleration can be a key factor and you can research ACL prevention programs in soccer etc...
 
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