Tricep injury

Big Vin · Oct 29, 2015

Just took an injury while doing dips between benches with 90 pounds on my lap. basically found myself on the floor about half way through and in pain...took about 10 minutes to get up. I have almost no tricep strength on the right side, but I can extend my arm straight, no problem. It's swollen near the elbow and I"m icing and popping Motrin for now. Going to the sports doc on Monday. Tried to do one arm tricep extension with just a 5 pound dumbbell...and I got nothing....
If I put my arm straight out in front of me, palm facing up...I can extend all the way...as I bring my arm towards my face, I start to feel tightness in the tri around 90 degrees...and pain shortly after..cannot even get close to my face. Anyone else have experience with this. Is this a complete tear? Strain? Surgery?

muscle96ss · Oct 29, 2015

Big Vin said:
Just took an injury while doing dips between benches with 90 pounds on my lap. basically found myself on the floor about half way through and in pain...took about 10 minutes to get up. I have almost no tricep strength on the right side, but I can extend my arm straight, no problem. It's swollen near the elbow and I"m icing and popping Motrin for now. Going to the sports doc on Monday. Tried to do one arm tricep extension with just a 5 pound dumbbell...and I got nothing....
If I put my arm straight out in front of me, palm facing up...I can extend all the way...as I bring my arm towards my face, I start to feel tightness in the tri around 90 degrees...and pain shortly after..cannot even get close to my face. Anyone else have experience with this. Is this a complete tear? Strain? Surgery?

Get an MRI, but my guess is that it is pretty much a complete tear. Any bruising; when mine exploded, I was black and blue from my shoulder to halfway down my forearm; but it took a couple of days to really come out show. My hand was also so swollen and kept going numb and tingling because of the severe swelling.

Big Vin · Oct 29, 2015

I have no bruising, tingling or numbing as of yet...but this only happened a few hours ago. How long was your recovery? Doc will probably send me right in for the MRI downstairs. I go to the Spurs team doctor office...so they have a great rep and are used to this stuff. Feels like I have a permanent pump in that tri.. :headbang:

muscle96ss · Oct 29, 2015

Big Vin said:
I have no bruising, tingling or numbing as of yet...but this only happened a few hours ago. How long was your recovery? Doc will probably send me right in for the MRI downstairs. I go to the Spurs team doctor office...so they have a great rep and are used to this stuff. Feels like I have a permanent pump in that tri.. :headbang:

My recovery was not the norm. I lost so much length on the end of tendon that the doc was only able to get me to 90 degrees of flexion on the operating table. So getting full ROM wasn't as simple as regaining ROM, but I had to completely develop ROM from 90 degrees to full from scratch. Also, I have a flap of muscle over the lateral portion of my bicep which is unattached and should be part of my medial head of my triceps. Its unsure whether it was missed during the surgery because it was so far away from where it should have been or whether it detached early on because it was too tight. I trust the doc because he is a friend and he does the Phoenix Suns and other sports teams out here. I also had a shitload of scar tissue as a result of the whole ordeal and then once we got the scar tissue all broken up, I walked through a doorway, literally, and broke off the tip of my olecranon(elbow). So my recovery isn't really something you can compare it to.

Big Vin · Oct 29, 2015

muscle96ss said:
My recovery was not the norm. I lost so much length on the end of tendon that the doc was only able to get me to 90 degrees of flexion on the operating table. So getting full ROM wasn't as simple as regaining ROM, but I had to completely develop ROM from 90 degrees to full from scratch. Also, I have a flap of muscle over the lateral portion of my bicep which is unattached and should be part of my medial head of my triceps. Its unsure whether it was missed during the surgery because it was so far away from where it should have been or whether it detached early on because it was too tight. I trust the doc because he is a friend and he does the Phoenix Suns and other sports teams out here. I also had a shitload of scar tissue as a result of the whole ordeal and then once we got the scar tissue all broken up, I walked through a doorway, literally, and broke off the tip of my olecranon(elbow). So my recovery isn't really something you can compare it to.

Wow...holy shit. Hope mine goes easier than that!

Ashop · Oct 30, 2015

Big Vin said:
I have no bruising, tingling or numbing as of yet...but this only happened a few hours ago. How long was your recovery? Doc will probably send me right in for the MRI downstairs. I go to the Spurs team doctor office...so they have a great rep and are used to this stuff. Feels like I have a permanent pump in that tri.. :headbang:

I have had a very similar sounding injury. It took me about 8 weeks to heal.

Big Vin · Oct 30, 2015

Ashop said:
I have had a very similar sounding injury. It took me about 8 weeks to heal.

Did you require surgery?

Ashop · Oct 31, 2015

Big Vin said:
Did you require surgery?

Fortunately No It did not. There would be some days I would wake up and could barley move my arm. Mine was just a severe strain. I felt it strain/pop one day when doing Hammer Strength ISO lateral pulldowns,,,I was going way to heavy (STUPID PREWORKOUT HAD ME WIRED THAT MORN!!)

Zomb131 · Oct 31, 2015

WOW! I love how the first thought was TEAR. Irresponsible, don't you think? Smh.

From reading your signs/symptoms, no bursing, pain after 90 degree elbow flexion, and loss of strength. I'd immediately assume a bad spasm pull. You said nothing about hearing a noise, e.g.: pop, snap, or tearing sound, so I wouldn't say as of yet, tear, until you see a DPT and/or get a MRI.

Since the injury was a few hours ago, you are on the right track, ice and motrin. The ice and motrin will prevent secondary muscle tissue injury. This is good for the first 24-48hrs and should not exceed that time, unless the pain is limiting daily function.

muscle96ss · Oct 31, 2015

Zomb131 said:
WOW! I love how the first thought was TEAR. Irresponsible, don't you think? Smh.

From reading your signs/symptoms, no bursing, pain after 90 degree elbow flexion, and loss of strength. I'd immediately assume a bad spasm pull. You said nothing about hearing a noise, e.g.: pop, snap, or tearing sound, so I wouldn't say as of yet, tear, until you see a DPT and/or get a MRI.

Since the injury was a few hours ago, you are on the right track, ice and motrin. The ice and motrin will prevent secondary muscle tissue injury. This is good for the first 24-48hrs and should not exceed that time, unless the pain is limiting daily function.

So you would expect bruising a few hours later? Not sure what a "bad spasm pull" is, but if when you try to a dumbbell extension with 5 pounds and you get nothing, there is either some serious inhibition going on or the muscle is not attached. I can understand if you can't lift the 5 pounds because the pain is too much, but to not physically be able, tells me something more is going anyway. Anyway, we will find out after the MRI.

Big Vin · Oct 31, 2015

Update:

The swelling is all around the elbow and extends up my tri about 8 inches or so...I have somewhat better ROM, but that should be the case as the swelling starts to subside. Still icing and Motrin until the 48 hour mark. Have a 9:45 appt on Monday morning to see what's what.

Big Vin · Oct 31, 2015

Noticing purple bruising from 2 -3 inches below the elbow....up the tricep now.

muscle96ss · Oct 31, 2015

Big Vin said:
Noticing purple bruising from 2 -3 inches below the elbow....up the tricep now.

Yep, definitely does not sound good. The recovery process from the surgery(if thats what is needed) normally is a pretty easy process, just takes time due to normal healing of the tendon following the procedure. Mine was definitely not the norm. The timeline of when you can do certain activities will be established by your doc as some are more conservative than others.

Ashop · Nov 1, 2015

Big Vin said:
Noticing purple bruising from 2 -3 inches below the elbow....up the tricep now.

I'm no doctor but that sounds like a tear to me.

fade · Nov 1, 2015

Tore by bicep back in February and didn't have any bruising but an obvious "ball" up towards my shoulder.

The one most important thing is not waiting to get it checked out, if it is a full tear the muscle gets tighter and tighter and it's harder to stretch the tendon back to full length. Get in ASAP.

Also, I didn't have any bruising except down in my forearm, the doc had to point it out to me. Full distal biceps tendon tear. Almost 100% now but took it very slow.

Big Vin · Nov 1, 2015

It happened Thursday and I'm going in tomorrow...so 4 days is as quick as I could get in. Was on the road for business and had to fly back. Hopefully surgery by the end of the week if needed, Stuck training legs for now. :banghead:

Ashop · Nov 2, 2015

Big Vin said:
It happened Thursday and I'm going in tomorrow...so 4 days is as quick as I could get in. Was on the road for business and had to fly back. Hopefully surgery by the end of the week if needed, Stuck training legs for now. :banghead:

Keep us informed brother and certainly best of luck with your appointment.

Big Vin · Nov 2, 2015

Went in this morning, doc takes a look at it and sends me right to x-ray. He says that sometimes when the tendon tears, it takes some bone with it. X Ray came out negative...no bone missing (he said surgery is a little more difficult when that happens).
Anyway, I have the MRI set for tomorrow morning and results at his office on Wednesday morning. He says physical inspection tells him 80% chance of surgery, depending on partial or total tear...At this point, I'm almost hoping for total..this way it gets re-attached the right way...instead of training with partial tendon (it'll probably tear again anyway).
Then, I went to the gym and banged out some legs, back hypers, and traps on the standing calf machine! :headbang::headbang::headbang:

muscle96ss · Nov 2, 2015

Big Vin said:
Went in this morning, doc takes a look at it and sends me right to x-ray. He says that sometimes when the tendon tears, it takes some bone with it. X Ray came out negative...no bone missing (he said surgery is a little more difficult when that happens).
Anyway, I have the MRI set for tomorrow morning and results at his office on Wednesday morning. He says physical inspection tells him 80% chance of surgery, depending on partial or total tear...At this point, I'm almost hoping for total..this way it gets re-attached the right way...instead of training with partial tendon (it'll probably tear again anyway).
Then, I went to the gym and banged out some legs, back hypers, and traps on the standing calf machine! :headbang::headbang::headbang:

You may want to try working out your left side for arms, shoulders, chest, etc... There are some studies that show that the overflow can help prevent some of the atrophy on the right and it will keep your left from losing much if anything. Thats what I did for both my elbow surgeries and it helped keep me sane as well.

little slice · Nov 2, 2015

muscle96ss said:
You may want to try working out your left side for arms, shoulders, chest, etc... There are some studies that show that the overflow can help prevent some of the atrophy on the right and it will keep your left from losing much if anything. Thats what I did for both my elbow surgeries and it helped keep me sane as well.

mfw