Hi folks
I'm Bob Schrupp physical therapist, Brad Heineck physical therapist, together we are the most famous physical therapists on the internet in our opinion of course Bob.
I wanted to have a great opening here.
Okay, today we're gonna talk about five steps to repair a broken collarbone,
And question is will Aaron Rodgers play again by December? Play football. And for the people who aren't football fans
He's a professional quarterback for the Green Bay Packers, broke his collarbone, in that arena
everyone's asking this big question, so after this, Is that a professional team the Packers? Oh, I'll give you more than you deserve
It's a solemn day in
Wisconsin by the way
Their flags are flying at half-mast
Well we're gonna show you if you break a collarbone
my son broke his by the way, all right, so I've kind of had first-hand knowledge of this and
what we went through. I broke mine and dislocated both of them
Well I guess you had better for first-hand knowledge, and work with patients as well
All right, well let's do this first Brad, if you are new to our channel
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Okay, broken collarbone. It's kind of like a broken rib. If you break it, chances are there isn't too much
you're gonna do. Now in Aaron Rodgers case, they're talking about surgery. The chances of anybody who's not a professional athlete
of having surgery for their collarbone is next to none, except my son had it,
Wait he didn't have to did he? No he did. What was his issue?
Well the issue was the bone, and these actually work good for this, the bone broke and was up like this
It was actually puncturing through the skin, and was almost ready to go through the skin,
Right up through the muscle, and that was my exception that I didn't get to yet
It's either that if it goes through the skin, or it could go down into the subclavian artery or vein and nerve group
That's a real danger then, right so yeah, in that case you're gonna have surgery, but if it's just a crack or a break
Any dislocation of the AC joint, we better talk about this stuff. We're talking about stuff and people are going what are you talking about?
You got the collarbones right here. They're kind of s-shaped aren't they? Yeah if you look down from the top and
Which one did you break by the way Brad? Well I broke the right one, dislocated the left,
Do you mind?
Is it deformed? No, not really because I've had people that, I mean I can tell
There's a lump there, it's even
healed a little bit like this. Mine didn't dislocate and separate. It was a fracture, but it wasn't complete
Oh, then you probably don't have any deformity at all then,
Yeah, it worked out good that way
Come on, Gumby. Anyways, so you've got the collarbone here, and if that gets fractured
that's one thing, but it's always important to remember you got the AC there, acromioclavicular joint right here, attaches here
And it attaches here to the sternum,
It's the clavicular sternum. I know, but this right here is the manubrium
But those joints right there if it dislocates, I've had mine here, I had both of them
It's painful and it changes. You can't move your shoulder like this because this joint right here is not working properly
The dislocation is probably worse than a break to some extent
I would say it's even more painful because
Right you stretch ligaments and such, and the other thing people need to realize about the clavicle
you know, the collarbone, it turns. It rotates. When I lift my arm like this, this turns slightly. I remember the
diagram where they talked about having a pin in here, and they could actually see the pin move when the arm moves. It's not dramatic.
It's not no. It's very little, but it's subtle, but it's important, and if the joints are irritated
They're gonna let you know it with that motion. By the way
I want to make the point, Aaron Rogers last time broke this side, his left side and it was
7-9 weeks or something like that. He was back, he didn't have surgery this time
This time it's his right side, obviously a little more serious because they are gonna do surgery,
Maybe the surgery will make it heal faster. It might.
You just never know and they're not gonna tell us. No they're not.
A lot of times you're looking at healing time of what 4-8 weeks, for the bone
and then you need to get the range of motion back and the strength, and then get into the game.
So our steps, what's the first step for the break? The vast majority of collar bones is gonna be this.
Probably a sling, just to mobilize it, let it rest and then the other important thing
This is what I had.
It's using this strap right here. What I had, a figure eight strap, basically the same thing
It's the same thing as this, something that pulls your shoulders back slightly so that you heal with good posture
If this is forward, and it's in that collar bone and everything heals with it forward, so it's difficult to regain that posture
then your shoulder's not gonna work as well, you're gonna have problems long-term.
Yeah these are a bad thing to have even when you don't have a broken collar, and actually that's what this is for,
Really isn't made for a broken collarbone, but I wouldn't hesitate to use it. Yeah it would work. Well right
It's comfortable
I used a figure eight one where it was velcro and you had to pull on it
And it was a little uncomfortable. This is more comfortable
So that's usually the first few weeks
You're gonna be wearing something just to protect it, let the bone start to heal and then Bob the next thing,
range of motion. Right starting to get some movement
and typically active assistive range of motion, you're not just gonna take the sling off and start exercising like this, because it's
gonna hurt like crazy
Particularly when you get up here, so we're going to assisted range of motion and one thing we could use is
A knee glide. Our good old knee glide. Even though it's says it's for the knee
It works for the arm as well, and you can put it here, and we're just gonna go
I'll do it on this arm so you can see it
Go out and back and the nice thing about this is you can put some pressure on it.
If it tolerates it. Initially you're not gonna deal with it. Whatever pain allows.
Now a ball
Would you also do pendulum too? Oh sure.
Yep
The pendulum is you lean forward, if I was doing the right side and you
just start using your body to kind of swing it forward like this and
you can probably go across, even though you might
That'll probably make it bite, you can test the water. Circles. Circle the other way, all that works out good
You can use a ball for going back and forth now if you happen to have a big ball on a table
That works out nice doesn't it. So you take your good arm
on top of your sore shoulder and then you can just gently bring it out like this
And you're gonna find out that when you get up in here, it's really gonna
make this uncomfortable when it's not ready
So this may take a few weeks in itself, just to get this range of motion, it's all guided by pain
Pain is gonna be your guide, master
We're gonna do 10 to 15 reps through these typically, and on this you can go right to left as well
But again probably when you go across your body, things are gonna get pinched up in there, and it's gonna hurt
So don't go so far. You can do circles yep
It's the beauty of the ball Bob.
Okay, now. Can we use a cane too or not?
Oh you bet, there's so many things you can use,
I'm just pulling out a couple of my favorites, so you can use a broomstick or a cane or anything like this,
So you can grab this one thumb up
and you can just work on, this is the side that's affected, right
You can work straight up like this, and then you can also go off to the side and work out that way
Yeah, all these are 10-15 reps, 2-3 times per day
Use a cold pack if you've overdone it.
Now if you're using the ball and you find out that you're getting here
and it's getting pretty comfortable, and you're going back and forth and things are getting better and
you're starting to get up here
you can just use your good arm to help this
Then we want to give it a pretty good stretch on the way up because, if you're gonna be throwing a ball or
Get back to higher level activities
This is where this knee glide helps on the wall. I can go up here and really
stretch it out like this,
Do you think we're gonna get a call from Aaron Rodgers and help him out? That's what I was kind of wondering.
We could see if we could get a video with him, that's right. You think that you'd want him on?
Oh sure
We'd have him on.
So then you're gonna go up like this and you can really get some end range here and when it gets to that point and
you can push into that, that's a real good sign
if you can get up there, but initially you're just gonna go
with a good hand, you're gonna help out and go as far as you can, 10-15 reps,
Ok and the whole goal is to get full range of motion
Particularly if you're an athlete doing an overhead throw, you really need to have that range of motion
By the way, I do sincerely feel bad that Aaron got hurt and
you know the old joke about sincerity? The key to success is sincerity and
once you learn to fake that you got it made.
All right
Sports specific exercises
strengthening
So once you gain range of motion, you're able to go from here, now what I used to do with mine is
when I started shooting baskets, ok cuz it wasn't a lot of work. You know
But it would still get this whole range of motion going and a little bit of strengthening, a little bit of active movement
Right, so shooting basketball
I think is good for overhead
or you could just take a ball, and just bounce it off the wall here.
Hopefully you got a little more air in it than that one sure
And here I'm gonna start, there's a lot of different exercises
you can do, but a good one is your old fashioned rotator cuff strengthening exercises because we want to get out here
so you're doing external rotation, keeping your elbow into the side at a right angle here and
then I'm gonna do the other one. I'll show it on this side and
pull in because we want these muscles in here to get built up, because yeah, they're gonna be very important
Again 10 to 15 reps on these
I like to do 3 sets of 10 as my favorite and goal for these exercises
Now this one is gonna hurt a little bit at first, but you're gonna pull in the scapular retractions
Like this and when you get back, watch my shoulders. I'm gonna pull back, he's squeezing his shoulder blades together.
All the muscles around the shoulder play a core role.
I mean they they provide the core muscles for the shoulder, and I would even go to
we're not gonna be able to get to all the exercises for this
Particularly if you're higher level, but these are some of them
I would do some reverse flies, like this working those muscles in here and then
In Aaron's case if he's watching, you know we're gonna start doing some of this exercise with
starting out low and then more full range of motion with a low resistance
And then you can double it up or get the heavier resistance
So you get more specific to the activity or the sport that you're working on and just
Sometimes even start on a table don't they right?
Exactly yeah
All right, we'll get you back Aaron. We'll get you back
Well one way or another whether you're Aaron Rodgers are you're playing backyard football with your children
That's what happened to me. I was playing volleyball in the one time
One was on my testing for my black belt, next was playing volleyball
And I don't remember what the third one was, but it was something I fell on my elbow
Just exactly like he did. My son fell right onto his shoulder, either on the shoulder or on the elbow
He was trying to catch two frisbees at the same time
All right, kids'll be kids. Thanks everybody for watching.