How to prevent stress fracture from reoccurring to Yao

I would hope that Yao would take notice and stop doing so much running etc.

Maybe he should work out more in a low impact area, like running in a pool instead of on a track.

Limit the wear and tear on his feet.

DD

 

the surgery should do the trick supposedly prevents reoccurance.

 

I worry about all the people who worry about things they cannot control...

Injuries are a part of sports. You train hard to get better and the great players play hard every game. Thats what makes them great. All this nonsense about play him less, train him less, its really all for not.

 

If you truly believe Adelman is playing Yao too much and that's the cause of his injury then you don't believe Yao is a superstar player in the NBA.

Yao gets in two hours before games for practice then has a weights session after games. If he's over doing it it's not Adelman's fault.

 

Stress fracture is mostly caused by running and jumping, not weight lifting.

 

he shouldn't definitely train by swimming or running a pool instead of running or jumping on hard surfaces. it'll relieve the stress on his lower body and it'll also whip him into better shape. im shocked if he hasn't been doing this already, as its the absolute best way to condition yourself for endurance, with none of the stress of running.

 

oops, fixed

 

QFT
You have to put in alot of work to be in "game" shape.
I can only imagine how hard a 7'6" 310 lbs. guy has to work to keep up with todays fast paced game. Yao has risen his game to 22 and almost 11 because of the extra work he puts in day in and day out. I'll live with any injury if hard work and dedication were the catalysts.

 

nike free 7.0

designed to simulate running bare foot.

will strengthen the muscles of the foot = strengthen the arch of the foot = be able to bear more weight.

 

You can bet your ass the Rockets will take all necessary precautions with Yao next season. They're going to be all over him after every game asking if he has any pain, and they won't just think it's a mild sprain.

I'll trust the Rockets trainers with this. You learn by making mistakes. This year they made a BIG one. I don't think they'll let it happen again. Running in a pool and excersizing so he doesn't put much stress on his legs? The Rockets training staff will have all that figured out.

Also the surgery is supposed to prevent recurrence of this injury. So let's all hope for the best. October can't come soon enough...

 

The Rockets need to get very serious about about buying, drafting, or trading for a first class center. The chronic reoccurring nature of Yao's foot injuries are a disturbing sign. This is starting to appear like an annual event. Not good.

 

Yeah, he had fractures twice before he even came to the NBA, right?

I think playing basketball, for his frame, size, and weight, is just murder on his poor feet. Fewer games, fewer minutes, maybe extreme weight loss too, which would cause other problems.

 

okay i think i may have a unique perspective on this.

first of all, i heard someone say above that that injuries are a part of sports and there is nothing we can do, well, that is fatalistic. we may fail, but surely there is prevention or things we can do to lessen the odds of injury.

secondly, strength is not the issue either as many seem to think. if anything yao is getting stronger and stronger, and if you have seen his legs, they are absolutely strong, thick, dense, muscular.

having yao do less running, or get special shoes, or do exercise in a safer environment like a pool - all of these i think are unnecessary. i mean, for rehab yes, all good ideas maybe, but i think all sort of miss the point as the "solution" to the problem of a reoccuring stress fracture.

to figure out how to prevent future occurances you must understand why this one happened and here is my guess. it has to do with how weight is TRANMITTED into Yao's feet. The human foot is designed to be able to bear the weight of the body and it does so not by being "strong as possible" but by design, its kind of a tripod and it has an arrangement of bones that go forward from the calcaneous (heel foot) and an arrangement that go out from the talus (toe foot). The outer arrangment of bones are tied to the peroneal muscles of the foot and if the peroneals are working properly (that is if they are differentiated enough from the muscles around them) then they lift and lower this outer portion of the foot (heel foot) and allow the weight of the body to be tranmitted out the toe foot. Which is to say that the navicular is a tramission point where the weight from the entire body is transmitted from down the tib/fib out through the calcaneous, navicular, cuneiforms, and the first three metatarsals the their respective phalanges. I'm willing to bet, er, I'm really 100% sure from watching Yao run, that his weight goes more out his heel foot because of the immobility of that part of his foot and the undifferentiation of his peroneal group (mm of the out side of the lwr leg). If the weight is tranmitted out that lateral portion of the foot the navicuar turns into 'something that takes the weight of the body' rather than as it was designed to be 'something that transmits the weight of the body through to the next bone and out the toes'. Think of all the NBA players you see. By how they move you get a sense of how fluidly the weight is transmitted through the feet, and if it gets caught up and creates a lumbering kinda thing. the idea i am presenting is just taking that line of argument along with some very physics oriented structural analysis of how the leg and foot should function and some careful observations.

Strengthening the area is not the answer. Bolts, screws, immobilizing all not the answer IMO. Let it heal, and then organize that foot and keep and eye on it so it transmits the weight through instead of jamming up in that navicular. The human foot is designed to bear the weight of the body if it is in proper order.

Even if screws are put in, the leg and foot still needs to be organized. No matter how much you reinforce that structure, the fractured area, it will fracture again (not because it is inherently weak) but because Yao's body is directing too much force in one area. The leg and foot need to be so organized to distribute the weight, to transmit, to share across the structures of the foot that are so designed to transmit that weight. The foot is not a pillar, it is not a compression structure. Yao was using his foot as such, as a compression structure, as if they were merely pillars, instead of the intricate piece of machinery that the foot, or the feet are.

So, why did his feet get like this? Gummed up and disorganized. Well most of our feet are pretty disorganized, and if we worked as much as Yao does then we would probably give ourselves some sort of serious foot injury. And the larger you are, obviously, increases the forces though the body, and there is more of this lumbering tendency, for everything to sort of glom together to try to hold the whole thing together. Look at Yao's traps. dense solid and using "strength" to hold his head up grabbing back onto his shoulders. Ideal would be to use balance and ease to rest the head atop his spine where the traps could disengage and his shoulders could rest on his ribcage like guns in a holster instead of being tacked up and draping off his neck like that. but that won't happen until his feet can be working properly and give a nice solid collumn of support up each side of his body that his pelvis and ribs can sit on so that they have some support to offer the shoulders and head. You see the feet need organizing to lend support upwards and the upper stuff needs organizing so that they can properly sit above the support of the feet. its a ciruclar situation, so little gains need to be made back and forth across the body until Yao is so organized that the forces that are transmitted through his body don't jam up that one area of his foot, but instead can be evenly distributed and transmitted through.

All of this would take a month or two of manual work, opening up septa and training his nervous system to enhabit his body a bit differently. Its called structural integration. its not a pill, or a surgery, its considering the body as a physical entity that is subject to physical laws (i.e. gravity) and working with the structure of the body to uncover what is observed to be its natural organization, working joints that trasmit forces across the entire body for health and well being. gddmit.


cheers.

 

I have thought about this. It's the total amount of running and weight bearing he does day in and day out. If he trains 2 hours a day running then it's a no brainer that he's getting injured. He needs days off perhaps 1-2 here and there to recover and he needs to reduce the total time he's doing weight bearing excercise on his feet. The body needs time to recover. This includes games and training in practice.

 

Send him to John Patterson after this to work on his muscles and to get his balance better.

 

We should draft a center this draft and bring back the twin towers if Yao stays healthy.

 

Clearly, you're not an athlete. You're over-analyzing the injury. A stress fracture of Yao's type is a repetitive motion injury, it happens when you don't get enough rest. You're much more likely to get a hairline fracture than a stress fracture from a collision.

 

Stop yelling at him to dunk the ball.