Column 88 | Healing from sports injuries

ANSWER

When it comes to a torn muscle, it is important for me to know how severe it is. Have only a few fibres or a bundle of fibres torn, or have you completely torn a muscle? You can tell if you have torn a muscle if you can no longer tense your chest muscles, or only with great pain. You can usually see an inward dent in the muscle, provided the swelling is not too great. A torn muscle fibre is a much smaller injury and is characterized by mild to moderate pain, which subsides after a few days. Based on your description, I am assuming the latter. If you had torn a muscle, it would be too late now anyway and I would not be able to help you, because in such a case the only solution would have been immediate surgery, which is no longer possible after 3 weeks.

At this point, I can only give you the firm advice never to train when you are in pain. If you do, you risk an even worse injury or even a complete tear of your chest muscles. It can take up to several weeks for the bruise to completely disappear, as this is a lengthy process. I can speak from experience on this topic, as I had to deal with a similar injury. 15 years ago, I suffered a torn muscle fiber bundle while doing incline bench presses with a weight of 240 kg. Fortunately, it was not so serious that I would have needed surgery.

However, the injury set me back 6 months in my training. I was unable to do any chest training during this time, so I only trained the remaining muscles that were not affected by the injury. The bruise was first red, then blue, then green, and it took about 4-5 months for it to disappear completely. After about 6 months, I started swimming to slowly get my chest muscles used to resistance again. At the same time, I started training my chest muscles again, initially with bench presses using only the bar, i.e. 20 kg. I increased the weight from week to week, and after about 8 weeks I was back at 200 kg.

If you experience pain during chest training, it is too early to train and you should wait another 1-2 weeks. Then you can try again. Only start training again when the pain has completely subsided. I can only advise against taking any tablets or ointments, as they simply do not help.

The only thing that helps in acute cases is taking Wobenzym. These are special enzymes that speed up the healing process. However, this only makes sense immediately after an injury, as this is the only time the enzymes can work. A burst of therapy with around 30 tablets a day is useful in order to quickly contain the inflammation and remove the associated waste products. I wish you a speedy recovery and hope that you can soon be back to training at full speed.