Kettlebell Crooked Metacarpal Straightening Out From KB Training?

[Football Bat]

Used to be Marine infantry and at some point during a deployment I broke my 5th (pinky) metacarpal on my right hand. We were already undermanned and I didn't want to leave the others hanging so I kept it hush hush and toughed it out. A few weeks after the pain subsided I noticed I couldn't grip the pistol grip of my rifle properly because my pinky finger would overlap my ring finger. Didn't affect my accuracy though so I let it be.

4 years later (3 months ago) I started ETK with that crooked metacarpal. I'd grip the kettlebell hard and force my pinky down into the right position. Felt some pretty bad pain in the knuckle and on the top face of my hand over the metacarpal but the pain started to subside after the first month or so.

Now I get almost no pain and my pinky seems to be straightening itself out. Got curious and found this medical text on google about how crooked bones can straighten out over time. Skeletal Tissue Mechanics

Has anyone else experienced this?

 

[MattM]

I believe this falls into the "wth effect" category.

 

[MikeMoran]

Yeah that is an awesome WTH effect!!

 

[MikeTheBear]

I'm still waiting for kettlebells to make me taller but so far no luck.

 

[arlaurin]

Makes sense. My senior project adviser had that book in his office and I flipped through it a few times when he was tutoring his bio-mechanics students. I wish I had read more of it.

Bones are actually two layers- there's this hard outer layer and spongy marrow inside. If you put the correct amount of load on it over time and loaded it correctly, it'll change its shape due to the loads placed on it. Any material flexes during loading, super brittle materials will flex until they reach this point where they can't absorb any more energy and break, hence people breaking bones. You weren't putting severe enough loads on it to cause it to fracture, so instead it changed over time from you unloading/loading it with the kettlebell. When you forced your finger in place on the handle and did your workout routing, you probably put some sort of tension load (stretching like pulling apart) on the bone and possibly a bending (rotation) moment on it. So it "stretched, then deformed" under the load to a straighter shape.

I think Eric Cressey wrote about the actual biology behind it if I remember correctly. Anytime you exercise you actually create microscopic tears in muscles that the body then fixes. Putting loads on your bones causes the bone structure to toughen, it becomes denser over time from the stimulus you applied. Kind of like how they tell women with osteoporosis to get up and do load bearing exercises when their bone structure becomes frail.

By the way, my disclaimer is that I'm not a doctor. I'm just a science nerd.

 

[Football Bat]

it changed over time from you unloading/loading it with the kettlebell

The repeated loading and unloading might be the key. 4 years of forcing my pinky into place for heavy deadlifts didn't seem to do anything for it. With the kettlebell though my pinky would get sharply loaded and unloaded dozens of times each session.

 

[arlaurin]

Isn't that this thing called "greasing the groove"?

 

[jimmy]

So now 9 months later has your finger ended up remodelling to it's original position?

I'm facing a similar issue with my thumb which healed a little bent from a fracture and same as you I've been forcing it in it's anatomically correct position when loading/unloading hoping it will remodel