Parramatta Eels lock Nathan Brown is the first pectoral tear casualty of the 2019 season. It's an injury that can see players sidelined for up to 14 weeks and has also become more prevalent in recent seasons.
Across 2017 and 2018, 19 players went down with pec tears.
The injury itself isn't a tear in the pectoral muscle, it's a tear in the tendon that connects the muscle to the upper arm. If the injury occurs at the muscle-end of the tendon, recovery is usually fast and doesn't require surgery. If it's at the bone-end, surgery is the first port of call and recovery can be around 10 weeks.
Speaking to NRL.com, Sea Eagles trainer Don Singe explains that tackling is often responsible for the majority of pec injuries.
"When someone is moving at say 30km/hr and runs past you but you grab at them, that lever is too long and that tendon takes the trauma.
"It's not always a reflection of fatigue or on pre-season training. It's just a really unfortunate situation that happens in an instant."
Singe adds that, contrary to popular belief, too much bench pressing is not the culprit, quite often a weakness in a player's posterior chain (back muscles) result in pec injuries, while accumulated fatigue can also be a factor.
"It's not so much there's too much bench press, it is that there's not enough balance between posterior area work and your bench work.
"More importantly you'd be looking at your loads and making sure players had plenty of rest between lifts, so you don't have an accumulated fatigue.
"If you're bench pressing and accumulated fatigue takes over, you might not complete the movement correctly and you add strain onto the tendon.
"When we look at our loading on that muscle group, we don't max-out our heavy lifting, heavy bench pressing. We look at a cycle of that strength work and out on the field we look at tackle technique – ensure their feet are in front of the person they're engaging. And don't extend your arms out."
The full article can read here: https://www.nrl.com/news/2019/03/24/the-lowdown-on-pectoral-tears/?fbclid=IwAR1Rg5ykbVCI5962-TzyYt0a7vrXlIGHJYlQWYBag-Kr30msYNDULcAgX2Q
Editorial
In this blogger's opinion, this injury is yet again an example of the NRL being behind the eight-ball when it comes to strength and conditioning knowledge and application. In comparing the NRL pec tear injury rate to the NFL's, there is a huge discrepancy. As written in this article, in 2017 and 2018, there were 19 pectoral tears. 18 of them occurred to NRL players, one occurred to an NRLW player. So an average of 9 per season.
In a report published in 2015 in the scientific journal, The Physician and Sportsmedicine, the researchers found there were 10 pectoral tears from 2000-2010. That's less than one per year.
This isn't really surprising though. The NFL has poured millions of dollars into sports science research for decades. This also filters down to college and high schools teams. In America, sports science isn't seen as some weird sub-culture and you don't have former players whingeing that players these days don't go to the pub after a game for a few schooners and a steak and chips.
In America, there are eight S&C coaches earning more than $500,000 USD a year in the College system.
For me the prevalence of pec tears is a symptom of a much larger issue and it's that we don't take sports science seriously enough in our game. It seems as if it's an after-thought and that we are at least a decade behind the NFL, which simply isn't good enough.
Strength and conditioning isn't just about making our players big and powerful. It's about making them durable, resilient, minimising injuries and prolonging careers.
We need to see more investment in this area of our game if we want to keep our best players on the field in the future.
Comments
It's still a major discrepancy no matter how you look at it. There are 480 Top 30 NRL players. There are 1,696 Top 53 NFL players. For NRL players to be recently suffering 9 of these injuries a year as opposed to one per year is a huge difference.
You're missing the point. Contact injuries aren't really preventable. If I dive in at your leg and it breaks, there's no amount of training you can do to prevent that.
Your point about the jerseys honestly sounds ridiculous to me as there are no scientific studies supporting that theory, no doctors have even mentioned that being a contributing factor and Gus Gould doesn't have a medical degree last I checked.
Even if your jersey theory was considered, it still comes back to strength and conditioning. The injury mechanism remains the same. To blame the jerseys for a rise in what is an injury that can likely be reduced doesn't make sense.
Yes it’s a discrepancy but I think what brissy was getting at is the tackling technique across the games are so different. Add a sidestep and The bulk of the force when your arms are out to wrap around a player can easily go directly to your forearm leaving you prone to overstretchimg the pec and causing a tear.
in contrast nfl tacklers generally lead with the chest/shoulder with arms closer to the body leading to a reduction in those over stretched pecs (granted this would likely cause more shoulder/upper back injuries).
If you want a more accurate comparison I’d compare our stats with super rugby.
I understand that, but it doesn't solve the problem in the NRL. In 2011 we had 11 pectoral tendon ruptures. The trainers and doctors have said that on the evidence available, a key contributing factor to pectoral tears is strength imbalance between the posterior and anterior chains.
Even due to the differences in tackling techniques, you still wouldn't expect there to be a 10 fold increase in the injury in the NRL. Surely, you'd expect a greater injury rate than one per season in the NFL given they have four times the number of professional players, and their real player numbers jump to 2,880 due to the 90 man rosters they have in pre-season.
So there's a 0.02% pectoral tear rate in the NRL, but a 0.0005% pec tear rate in the NFL.
In 2011 we had 11 pectoral tendon ruptures.
Super, that is SEVEN FREEKING seasons back and no one is seriously looking onto how these injuries are occurring with such astounding regularity? FKN UNBLVBL.
IF they supposedly know the difference between posterior and anterior strength is a cause then WHY, WHY are they not developing programs to correct this?
TEN YEARS behind? FKN centuries with that lack of response to a serious problem like this.
Sir Super 22: A mature and educated blog. Something that needed to be raised. Are there any stats on pec injuries caused at training? If so it would seem that those injuries could and should be eliminated there? I would like to raise another injury that needs discussion. That is knee injuries of the ACL kind. I heard recently part of a discussion coming from an AFL source on ACL injuries. It appears that worldwide there has been an ongoing investigation as to what they call THe World`s Best Practice in dealing with ACL injuries. The results so far obtained indicate that the best treatment of those injuries is not to operate and to let nature take its course!! This is contrary to the treatment given to NRL players at present. I feel that the NRL should be aware of this World`s Best Practice. If not, the NRL should be made aware and take it up with the Australian Medical establishment. Any positive advance in the treatment of ACL injuries has the possibility of saving the career of many NRL footballers and that is a good thing.
On the pec tear front, majority of injuries are occurring in games.
Regarding ACL treatment best practice. It really depends on the type of injury. A full rupture requires surgery regardless. When the ACL ruptures it effectively shatters, there's very little to actually heal and so they take a ligament from lower down the leg and insert it in the knee. Partial tears can be rehabbed without surgery and the NRL is very aware of this. It's what we did with Kaysa Pritchard in 2017. It essentially looks at strengthening the surrounding muscle groups to provide more stability around the joint. I spoke to a physio last year who specialises in ACL rehabilitation and they're managing to lower the return rates quite drastically. I think the record at the moment is a 9-10 month return to sport following a full rupture. Which is impressive considering 12 months is the average.
There's a lot of research being conducted at the moment in regards to preventing or lowering the risk of ACL tears as it's easier than trying to treat it after the fact. There are now a range of simple exercise tests that can evaluate a player's risk of ACL tear and a lot of the risk can be reduced.
Injuries are going to occur, someone can be genetically pre-disposed to ACL tears or hamstring tears. And sometimes there is literally nothing a player can do to avoid an injur like Gutho's ACL tear in 2017 which was the result of a tackle and not the result of a strength imbalance or landing from a jump.
Gus has a theory that the newer style of jerseys is part of the problem. He made the observation that pec injuries started to become a problem roughly around the time the newer style injuries were being introduced.
Haha, I didn’t read your whole reply,
Yeah Brett I heard another commentator attribute it to the jerseys. Players can't get a prpoer grab on them. I guess its similar to lifting dumb bells with one finger as opposed to using your whole hand. You're not utilising the full muscle group together and therefore additional strain is placed on certain muscles.
Briing back the old jerseys with collars
Sounds as though you're more in danger of a wrist injury than a pec.
Although I would love to see the old jerseys back.