skylark37
Well-Known Member
Long and quite in depth article on The Athletic about ACL injuries and how well Callum Wilson has done in coming back even stronger. Have copied and pasted the text here so people not subscribed can read it:
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After two devastating knee injuries and more than a year out, this is how Callum Wilson returned sharper than ever
By Peter Rutzler Oct 23, 2019
Part 1/4
It wasn’t too long ago that suffering an anterior cruciate ligament tear would spell the end of a player’s career.
There were those who would never fully recover, like Chelsea striker Pierluigi Casiraghi. Signed by Gianluca Vialli in 1998 for a statement fee worth £5.4 million, he became trapped in an endless cycle of operations and rehabilitation and was forced to retire in 2002.
“For me, London and Chelsea were a dream. A very serious accident cancelled everything,” Casiraghi told the Daily Mail last month.
“(It was) an incredible physical and mental pain… but now it is useless to go back to thinking about it because it still hurts.”
There are also many players who did make a comeback, but found their careers blown off course.
In a study published last year, Frankfurt’s Goethe University found that more than a third of players who had suffered ACL injuries while playing at the highest level in England and Spain failed to return at the same level. A similar study, published by Swedish researchers in 2016, found that only 65 per cent of players who had suffered ACL injuries were still competing at the same level three years later.
It is a remarkable feat then that Callum Wilson has not only managed to return to the highest level after rupturing the ACL in both his knees, but that he also appears to be improving.
Wilson’s inner drive has catapulted him from non-League loan spells with Kettering Town and Tamworth to becoming one of the Premier League’s most feared marksmen and now a member of the England squad.
On Saturday, he made his 100th Premier League appearance for Bournemouth and looked sharper than ever.
So, how did he do it? The Athletic has spoken to those who helped him return to find out about the challenges he faced and how, remarkably, such devastating blows were used to make him faster and stronger.
The former England and Chelsea full-back Claire Rafferty knows the challenges Wilson will have faced all too well, having ruptured ACLs three times during her playing career — twice in her left knee and once in her right.
“When I injured my ACL for the first time, what I didn’t really understand or appreciate then, was that my career was never going to be the same again,” she tells The Athletic. “Other injuries happened. You’ve got a fake ligament in your knee, your body is having to always compensate, the mechanics aren’t the same.
“I became a lot more conscious about what I was doing, what I was eating, how I was training. When I used to tackle (before the injury) I would throw myself in, and that made me think twice about dangling a leg here and there. I think with the second one, it took a while for me to get back to my normal self. You get cleared to be on the pitch but it takes a long time to get your form back. By the time I got my form back, I did it for the third time.”
Time is a precious commodity to a footballer. Careers are over in the blink of an eye and to be sidelined for the length of an entire season is almost overwhelming. For those with a desperate determination to push on and compete, returning from injury as quickly as possible becomes the number one priority. Sometimes at risk of compromising your own recovery.
This was the case for former Nottingham Forest midfielder Chris Cohen, who Stuart Pearce once said was the most professional player he had ever met. Cohen had an unmatched desire to succeed, so when he suffered the first of three agonising ACL injuries, his priority was returning to play as soon as possible.
“For six years in a row I would play every minute of every game,” Cohen, now a coach with Forest’s under-23s and under-18s, tells The Athletic.
“Then you get injured and all you focus on is, ‘I’m going to get back quicker than anyone else.’ That’s probably the challenge that you set yourself. People try to stop you and say, ‘Look, it’s better to come back stronger. It’s better to take your time with it.’
“The second time I came back (from an ACL injury) I was icing my knee at half-time (of games). It was stupid. It made absolutely no sense to make your knee colder at half-time. The physios told me not to, for obvious reasons. In my head, it was helping me — for me, it was part of the reason I was staying fit. I suppose everyone is different. I never felt the same probably after my last (third) cruciate (injury). After the first two, I felt I was just about back to fully fit.
“But as I said, I was icing my knee at half-time. How could I be fully fit if I’m icing my knee at half-time? I was just so desperate to play football. You’ll do anything to do that.”
After returning prematurely from his second ACL injury, Cohen ruptured the ACL in his right knee for a second time against Derby County just four games into his comeback. Studies now suggest that the longer you take to recover, the better your chance of avoiding re-injuring yourself.
“My advice to the younger kids who have had ACL injuries is always to work as hard as you can, get yourself ready, and set your goals like I did,” says Cohen. “But realistically, the longer you take with it, the less chance you have of doing it again and that’s the most important thing. Why risk playing football for two months when you can be out for another year after?”
Wilson also fell victim to the temptation of a rushed comeback.
He has conceded that he came back too quickly from his first ACL rupture, playing again after just six months, and that it worked against him. His rehabilitation was not perfect and the consequence was that his runs were now not symmetrical. He was unable to latch onto through-balls from his team-mates in the same way that had done previously. It would take him 10 matches to score again, and he would hit just six goals from 27 matches before being struck down again.
The consecutive nature of his two knee injuries — which came just 16 months apart — left him floored. The first, to his right knee, came as a result of a tackle by Philipp Wollscheid away to Stoke City on September 26, 2015 (below), while the second, to his left, came during a February 2017 training session.
“As I was driving home I got upset,” Wilson told The Guardian. “I was punching the hell out of my car and everything. I got home. My wife wasn’t there and I threw my keys through this window and nearly cracked this door. I went upstairs, lay on the bed, got upset and fell asleep. I was sobbing. I was fuming. There were upset tears — tears for how long it was going to take.”
While it obviously didn’t feel that way at the time, that second injury offered Wilson an opportunity. He was able to rehabilitate again, and for Bournemouth’s medical team, it provided the chance to work not only on the newly-damaged left knee, but the right one too.
- - -
After two devastating knee injuries and more than a year out, this is how Callum Wilson returned sharper than ever
By Peter Rutzler Oct 23, 2019
Part 1/4
It wasn’t too long ago that suffering an anterior cruciate ligament tear would spell the end of a player’s career.
There were those who would never fully recover, like Chelsea striker Pierluigi Casiraghi. Signed by Gianluca Vialli in 1998 for a statement fee worth £5.4 million, he became trapped in an endless cycle of operations and rehabilitation and was forced to retire in 2002.
“For me, London and Chelsea were a dream. A very serious accident cancelled everything,” Casiraghi told the Daily Mail last month.
“(It was) an incredible physical and mental pain… but now it is useless to go back to thinking about it because it still hurts.”
There are also many players who did make a comeback, but found their careers blown off course.
In a study published last year, Frankfurt’s Goethe University found that more than a third of players who had suffered ACL injuries while playing at the highest level in England and Spain failed to return at the same level. A similar study, published by Swedish researchers in 2016, found that only 65 per cent of players who had suffered ACL injuries were still competing at the same level three years later.
It is a remarkable feat then that Callum Wilson has not only managed to return to the highest level after rupturing the ACL in both his knees, but that he also appears to be improving.
Wilson’s inner drive has catapulted him from non-League loan spells with Kettering Town and Tamworth to becoming one of the Premier League’s most feared marksmen and now a member of the England squad.
On Saturday, he made his 100th Premier League appearance for Bournemouth and looked sharper than ever.
So, how did he do it? The Athletic has spoken to those who helped him return to find out about the challenges he faced and how, remarkably, such devastating blows were used to make him faster and stronger.
The former England and Chelsea full-back Claire Rafferty knows the challenges Wilson will have faced all too well, having ruptured ACLs three times during her playing career — twice in her left knee and once in her right.
“When I injured my ACL for the first time, what I didn’t really understand or appreciate then, was that my career was never going to be the same again,” she tells The Athletic. “Other injuries happened. You’ve got a fake ligament in your knee, your body is having to always compensate, the mechanics aren’t the same.
“I became a lot more conscious about what I was doing, what I was eating, how I was training. When I used to tackle (before the injury) I would throw myself in, and that made me think twice about dangling a leg here and there. I think with the second one, it took a while for me to get back to my normal self. You get cleared to be on the pitch but it takes a long time to get your form back. By the time I got my form back, I did it for the third time.”
Time is a precious commodity to a footballer. Careers are over in the blink of an eye and to be sidelined for the length of an entire season is almost overwhelming. For those with a desperate determination to push on and compete, returning from injury as quickly as possible becomes the number one priority. Sometimes at risk of compromising your own recovery.
This was the case for former Nottingham Forest midfielder Chris Cohen, who Stuart Pearce once said was the most professional player he had ever met. Cohen had an unmatched desire to succeed, so when he suffered the first of three agonising ACL injuries, his priority was returning to play as soon as possible.
“For six years in a row I would play every minute of every game,” Cohen, now a coach with Forest’s under-23s and under-18s, tells The Athletic.
“Then you get injured and all you focus on is, ‘I’m going to get back quicker than anyone else.’ That’s probably the challenge that you set yourself. People try to stop you and say, ‘Look, it’s better to come back stronger. It’s better to take your time with it.’
“The second time I came back (from an ACL injury) I was icing my knee at half-time (of games). It was stupid. It made absolutely no sense to make your knee colder at half-time. The physios told me not to, for obvious reasons. In my head, it was helping me — for me, it was part of the reason I was staying fit. I suppose everyone is different. I never felt the same probably after my last (third) cruciate (injury). After the first two, I felt I was just about back to fully fit.
“But as I said, I was icing my knee at half-time. How could I be fully fit if I’m icing my knee at half-time? I was just so desperate to play football. You’ll do anything to do that.”
After returning prematurely from his second ACL injury, Cohen ruptured the ACL in his right knee for a second time against Derby County just four games into his comeback. Studies now suggest that the longer you take to recover, the better your chance of avoiding re-injuring yourself.
“My advice to the younger kids who have had ACL injuries is always to work as hard as you can, get yourself ready, and set your goals like I did,” says Cohen. “But realistically, the longer you take with it, the less chance you have of doing it again and that’s the most important thing. Why risk playing football for two months when you can be out for another year after?”
Wilson also fell victim to the temptation of a rushed comeback.
He has conceded that he came back too quickly from his first ACL rupture, playing again after just six months, and that it worked against him. His rehabilitation was not perfect and the consequence was that his runs were now not symmetrical. He was unable to latch onto through-balls from his team-mates in the same way that had done previously. It would take him 10 matches to score again, and he would hit just six goals from 27 matches before being struck down again.
The consecutive nature of his two knee injuries — which came just 16 months apart — left him floored. The first, to his right knee, came as a result of a tackle by Philipp Wollscheid away to Stoke City on September 26, 2015 (below), while the second, to his left, came during a February 2017 training session.
“As I was driving home I got upset,” Wilson told The Guardian. “I was punching the hell out of my car and everything. I got home. My wife wasn’t there and I threw my keys through this window and nearly cracked this door. I went upstairs, lay on the bed, got upset and fell asleep. I was sobbing. I was fuming. There were upset tears — tears for how long it was going to take.”
While it obviously didn’t feel that way at the time, that second injury offered Wilson an opportunity. He was able to rehabilitate again, and for Bournemouth’s medical team, it provided the chance to work not only on the newly-damaged left knee, but the right one too.