live to see Seeing is believing. With Rafael Nadal practically in the shower suffering from an abdominal injury, with everything against him, unable to serve properly, unable to compete 100%, with his father from the stands gesturing for him to leave… Rafael Nadal has once again pulled pride to achieve an epic victory.
It hurt to see a Rafael Nadal shrunken, unable to land a service hit at any speed. It was commendable to see the effort of the Mallorcan trying to find solutions to finish his match, without being able to serve, and possibly also with pain in some right hand gestures. But all that pain turns to utter disbelief after seeing how he has dealt with his match.
I doubt that anyone else would have been exposed to what has been exposed today Rafael Nadal: expose yourself to more serious injuries, expose yourself to losing without being able to compete properly. Maximum respect for sport. Maximum respect for the competition. Maximum respect for the public. Maximum self-respect.
After witnessing something so exceptional, he knows little about this deepening of the abdominal muscle injury, but here it goes.
And it is that the acute muscle injury in the rectus abdominis, without being a very serious or dangerous injury, it is extremely limiting for the practice of tennis. We have been watching since the beginning of the tournament Nadal with a cross-shaped bandage on his right rectus abdominis. A bandage made with kinesio tape, an elastic adhesive bandage, used in his case to offer some support to that muscle.
That shows us that Nadal He has been suffering from discomfort in that area since he started competing at Wimbledon. But what is a muscle injury, and why does it occur in the rectus abdominis in tennis players?
Muscles have different types of contraction. Isometric, when it contracts without its insertional ends moving. Concentric, when their ends approach each other during contraction. And eccentric, when the muscle is required to contract while stretching.
Nadal during the Wimbledon quarterfinal match.
REUTERS
If we think about the biomechanics of a tennis player’s serve, after the launch a position of trunk extension and rotation is produced (with the rectus abdominis muscle in elongation), from which an aggressive contraction is produced, flexing the trunk and forcing an eccentric contraction of the rectus abdominis contralateral to the dominant shoulder (Nadal he is left-handed, so it is his right rectus abdominis that works the most in the biomechanics of the serve).
Sometimes, either due to an increase in the volume of muscular work (perform more serves), or due to a change in biomechanics that generates more acceleration (serve faster, activating more abdominal muscles), the amount of load is greater than muscle tolerance, and tissue damage occurs.
This muscle damage can be categorized in different ways, based on its severity. We will speak of a muscle strain if there has been damage to the tissue but without discontinuity of the fibers. That is, the muscle stretches beyond its tolerance but does not break. An inflammatory reaction occurs, the muscle is painful on active contraction, tolerates less load (can be pulled fewer times, or more slowly), but can still be quite functional.
If there is discontinuity in the muscle fibers, then we are talking about an acute muscle injury, of different severity depending, among other things, on how many centimeters of muscle are affected. In this case, functional disability increases, making sports practice painful, especially gestures in which the affected muscle participates the most.
We do not know the severity of the muscle injury of Rafael Nadalbut the limitations shown in his game during the quarterfinal match against Fritz they do not bode well. The normal recovery period for a muscle injury is approximately three weeks until the muscle can return to normal training, after which time it is advisable to gradually resume the most damaging biomechanical gestures.
Rafael Nadal. Seeing is believing.
*** Blanca Bernal is a physiotherapist, she worked for several years for the WTA and the World Padel Tour, and currently works at her Mobility clinic.
