Stress Fracture healing/Flip turns in the pool

Triathlon Forum
1

Hello, this is not my first time posting about my femoral neck stress fracture which happened at the end of this past June. I’m on week 17 of recovery and it’s going slowly. I’ve been off the crutches for about six weeks but there is still some minor soreness off and on when I walk. Sometimes it feels like I don’t have a stress fracture and other times I feel the soreness in the groin area where the fracture exists. Sometimes the soreness is in the front hip flexor area and sometimes I feel it on the outside of my hip. I think I’ve been doing too much other activities and it has slowed the healing process.

I have a good PT and ortho doc and been following their orders. I am allowed to do master swims with flip turns off the wall and do a little easy bike riding. Sadly I think the culprit is the flip turns (open turns pushing off the wall are even worse) during master swims. After a master swim, the outside of my hip feels achy but then a bit better in an hour or so. It could be I’m also kicking harder. I feel that I might need to stop the master swims for a few weeks and just swim with a pull buoy and not even touch the wall. This is very hard for me as master swims are my only social outlet and they are a great workout to keep up some fitness.

Anyone have any past experience with a slow healing stress fracture? Anyone have problems with flip turns? What about off and on aches and pains?

I know femoral neck stress fractures can take 4-6 months but seems like many people recover quicker. Maybe I’m doing too much?

I do see my PT tonight and my ortho doc at the end of the month. But it’s nice to hear feedback from others with similar experiences and struggles.

Thanks in advance!

2

I know nothing about any of this…

Do you push “straight” off the wall? Is one side of your body more compressed/pushing more? That may account for some of the soreness. (sorry if that isn’t a good description, I’m having trouble finding the right words to explain what I mean…)

3

I know nothing about any of this…

Do you push “straight” off the wall? Is one side of your body more compressed/pushing more? That may account for some of the soreness. (sorry if that isn’t a good description, I’m having trouble finding the right words to explain what I mean…)

My flip turns are not very good I’ll admit. I learned to swim a few years ago and have only been doing flip turns regularly in a pool for about a year or so. I’m not flexible and my arms are all over the place. It’s not pretty :slight_smile:

I might be more compressed on one side. I have a swim goal of improving flip turns so it will be something to work on when I’m healed.

4

I had a hip injury last year, not a stress fracture. Swimming was great until I got to the end of the lane. Any turn really hurt. It was winter so no open water was available, I would have liked an Endless pool type of thing but none were available.

I had to do a really awkward and slow turn without really bending at the waist and resist the urge to push off the wall. As much as I hate it I would probably try one of those tethers and swim in place.

5

I didn’t have your fx, but I was rehabbing in the pool a couple years ago after a foot fx, and when I was able to start doing flip turns again, I kept the bad leg tucked in and pushed off one-footed. As I improved, I -slowly- worked in the other leg, just adding a little pressure pushing off the wall.

Do you feel like you’re pushing off equally with both legs?

6

…. and when I was able to start doing flip turns again, I kept the bad leg tucked in and pushed off one-footed. As I improved, I -slowly- worked in the other leg, just adding a little pressure pushing off the wall.

i did the latter part of this, not the leg tuck part. my sports orthopaedic surgeon specifically said not to use the foot in push-offs, so i didn’t try to. wanting maximum healing in the least amount of time, i probably waited longer than necessary to bring in the stressed foot for push-offs, but i was happy enough with the result, so no complaints.
peggy

7

I didn’t have your fx, but I was rehabbing in the pool a couple years ago after a foot fx, and when I was able to start doing flip turns again, I kept the bad leg tucked in and pushed off one-footed. As I improved, I -slowly- worked in the other leg, just adding a little pressure pushing off the wall.

Do you feel like you’re pushing off equally with both legs?

I did try pushing off with one leg a week ago, but then I felt some tendon soreness on the top of my good foot. I’ve read about how some triathletes successfully did the one leg flip turn during the rehab of a stress fracture.

This past Saturday was a long hard master swim workout (over 4K yards) and I was trying to push off equally and not too hard but my hip was still achy after the swim. Felt better in the afternoon. But it makes me realize that these workouts are not helping me heal. Such a bummer!

8

I had a hip injury last year, not a stress fracture. Swimming was great until I got to the end of the lane. Any turn really hurt. It was winter so no open water was available, I would have liked an Endless pool type of thing but none were available.

I had to do a really awkward and slow turn without really bending at the waist and resist the urge to push off the wall. As much as I hate it I would probably try one of those tethers and swim in place.

Yeah swimming in the open water was great and I even swam outside here in Vermont on Sept 26th! (three weeks ago and this past weekend it snowed!). And my hip felt OK doing the open water swimming.

An Endless pool would be a great idea. I remember researching the costs but it’s not feasible in our house.

9

My personal history of plantar fasciitis and calf strains keeps me from pushing off at all on flip turns. I flip on the “cross” at the bottom of the pool, miss the wall completely, do a sidestroke kick followed by a dolphin kick like I used to when switching directions in water polo, and off I go. You lose a little time (probably a second for each), but it wasn’t that hard to recalibrate expected pace. I’m a few seconds slower per 100 in practice, but who really gives a crap? And my feet love me for it.

JMHO, but pushing off the wall carries either no or slightly negative benefit if you’re training for an OWS in a pool.

10

I had a femoral neck stress fracture 10-years ago. I was not running for almost 6 months. I do recall the achy pain as I was healing. Only advice I can share is to take it easy on your push-off while things harden up. It’s a PIA but at least you can swim. Good luck!

11

Flip early so you cant push off the wall. This is hard as shit to get your speed back up without a pushoff, might make you a better swimmer

12

I’m in the tail end of recovery from a proximal femoral shaft stress fracture. I work in an ortho practice, so I get harassed daily from the docs about my compliance to the recovery protocol :slight_smile:

The main idea of recovery is that if something hurts, don’t do it. Initially I wasn’t even allowed to kick in the pool. Even now at 3 months out, I don’t think I could push off from the wall repeatedly for long.

It has been so hard to back out of all my fall races, but as all the docs keep reminding me, it’s so much better to be cautious now and let it heal. Yours is in a worse spot than mine, so be cautious. You do not want to end up getting surgery. The thought of getting a femoral nail (what I would get for a displaced fracture) is sometimes the only thing that keeps me from going out and running on it.

Hang in there! It’ll get better (at least that’s what I keep telling myself). It wouldn’t hurt to put in a call to your doc and get advice from him/her, find out if you’re to a point that you can push through this. Good luck and I hope you have a good recovery.

13

Flip early so you cant push off the wall. This is hard as shit to get your speed back up without a pushoff, might make you a better swimmer

My flip turns are so poor that sometimes I miss the wall completely. This is a good suggestion. I am going to try to do a flip turn early and not hit the wall and see how that goes.

14

I’m in the tail end of recovery from a proximal femoral shaft stress fracture. I work in an ortho practice, so I get harassed daily from the docs about my compliance to the recovery protocol :slight_smile:

The main idea of recovery is that if something hurts, don’t do it. Initially I wasn’t even allowed to kick in the pool. Even now at 3 months out, I don’t think I could push off from the wall repeatedly for long.

It has been so hard to back out of all my fall races, but as all the docs keep reminding me, it’s so much better to be cautious now and let it heal. Yours is in a worse spot than mine, so be cautious. You do not want to end up getting surgery. The thought of getting a femoral nail (what I would get for a displaced fracture) is sometimes the only thing that keeps me from going out and running on it.

Hang in there! It’ll get better (at least that’s what I keep telling myself). It wouldn’t hurt to put in a call to your doc and get advice from him/her, find out if you’re to a point that you can push through this. Good luck and I hope you have a good recovery.

Hi dawnawanna, sorry to learn of your stress fracture. The femur is a difficult bone to heal!

I think I started swimming in my masters group way too early. I’m going to start swimming mostly with a pull buoy and do flip turns where I don’t hit the wall. At least I’ll give it a try and see if that doesn’t aggravate my hip. I actually gave my hip a rest this morning and didn’t swim at all which is a bummer. (seeing what “doing nothing” feels like)

My second MRI back on 9/29 showed some healing but also more edema which was worrisome. Shows I’ve been doing too much. I think I’ve also been in denial about doing too much in the pool.

I’m talking to my doctor in less than two weeks but I think he’ll tell me to keep it conservative. I’m also talking to someone about an Alter G program to help me heal faster. I just watched a video of a pro triathlete with a severe femoral neck stress fracture get better quickly running on the Alter G. It is supposed to stimulate bone healing with just enough impact to not injure or aggravate healing.

Best wishes! Heal quickly! I

15

Flip early so you cant push off the wall. This is hard as shit to get your speed back up without a pushoff, might make you a better swimmer

This is a really good suggestion.

16

Flip early so you cant push off the wall. This is hard as shit to get your speed back up without a pushoff, might make you a better swimmer

my coach actually prescribes no-wall-turn sets like this occasionally because it’s good OWS practice. i wouldn’t do it all the time unless i had to, and i’m not sure i agree with the other poster about pushing off the wall being useless/worse than useless, but you might as well do it if you can’t push off anyway.

17

Hi,

I just got over a femoral neck stress fracture. It took me 6 months to get back to healthy - and I still have yet to run (I had a clear MRI about 2 weeks ago).

This probably isn’t what you want to hear - but the only way I could get mine to heal was to stop everything.

I was on crutches for the first part, then added in easy swimming, easy riding, etc… I was following doctors orders and progressions. Everything was pain free for the most part, but similar to you, I would get minor “aches” “pains” and “tightness” that at the time I didn’t think as a big deal. Looking back I realize those were signs I should have been listening to.

I had an MRI at 9 weeks and it showed minimal healing but I continued physical activity as it was “pain free”. When I tried to walk/run at the 12 week mark pain came back instantly. At this point I shut everything down - and I mean EVERYTHING - for 7+ weeks. It was super challenging (mentally) but looking back I wish I had done it sooner so this didn’t drag on so long. If you think about the femoral neck, so many muscles and tendons connect up in the hip area - for me, just activating my psoas muscle (which you use for nearly everything), was irritating the healing process.

I understand where you are coming from that you want to stay active, stay fit, etc… but taking the time to heal properly, especially now (it is almost November, a perfect time to not be in good form - most people take an “off-season” this time of year) is totally worth it.

For me, healing time seemed to take forever - but now that I am on the other side, it wasn’t the end of the world. I kind of regret not shutting everything down early on. Live and learn. I thought I was doing everything right at the time, I guess that’s part of the process.

Feel free to reach out via my webpage if you have any specific questions.

I also wrote some blogs on my injury at linseycorbin.com / http://www.linseycorbin.com/blog/ - starting in mid-May.

Good luck!

linsey corbin

18

I didn’t have the same stress fracture as you but I did have one in my heel that took about 16-18 weeks to heal. During that time I didn’t run at all but definitely still got in the pool whether to aqua jog or swim. When swimming I would just push off with one leg. It starts to suck after a bunch of laps but at least I was able to get some exercise in.

19

Anyone have any past experience with a slow healing stress fracture? Anyone have problems with flip turns? What about off and on aches and pains?

Nov 2012 I was running on what had been a niggling groin pain - I say niggling but in the mornings it would be an hour before I could fully weight my right leg. Did one run and couldn’t walk afterwards. Or the next day, or the next day. I was diagnosed with a stress response. The oedema was halfway across the femoral neck, but a CT scan showed no fracture.

Another MRI at the end of Feb (3 months, during which I did no running, but kept up swimming and biking and used a XC ski machine a lot; no crutches - UK doctors seem less interventionist on that front than US ones, from what I’ve read here) and the oedema had reduced by 25%. By the end of April I could feel it was better, started running on it and had an MRI that showed all clear. Completely non-linear recovery rate; I didn’t change anything I did in Feb-April.

By the first week of July I had a groin pain on the left side. This turned out to be a less major left-side femoral shaft stress response. I think I caught this a bit earlier knowing what the symptoms were. Back to the XC machine for a month, then holiday and taper in August. Up to the third week of August I could feel a slight persistent niggle. In the last week of Aug it felt ok and I completed IMC (lack of conditioning told badly in the leg muscles, but that’s to be expected). An MRI a couple of weeks later disclosed the oedema had returned, but not as badly as the beginning of July. I took two months off and was fine after that.

The lesson: there is no lesson to be be had. Non-linear and inconsistent healing rates. Or. conceivably, an additional factor slowing the healing that I was never able to identify.

I don’t remember ever having an issue pushing off the wall in the pool though. the “hop test” on dry land was (and is) my go-to test to check on groin pain then and now, but wall push offs didn’t (as far as I remember) trigger a response.

20

Hi,

I just got over a femoral neck stress fracture. It took me 6 months to get back to healthy - and I still have yet to run (I had a clear MRI about 2 weeks ago).

This probably isn’t what you want to hear - but the only way I could get mine to heal was to stop everything.

I was on crutches for the first part, then added in easy swimming, easy riding, etc… I was following doctors orders and progressions. Everything was pain free for the most part, but similar to you, I would get minor “aches” “pains” and “tightness” that at the time I didn’t think as a big deal. Looking back I realize those were signs I should have been listening to.

I had an MRI at 9 weeks and it showed minimal healing but I continued physical activity as it was “pain free”. When I tried to walk/run at the 12 week mark pain came back instantly. At this point I shut everything down - and I mean EVERYTHING - for 7+ weeks. It was super challenging (mentally) but looking back I wish I had done it sooner so this didn’t drag on so long. If you think about the femoral neck, so many muscles and tendons connect up in the hip area - for me, just activating my psoas muscle (which you use for nearly everything), was irritating the healing process.

I understand where you are coming from that you want to stay active, stay fit, etc… but taking the time to heal properly, especially now (it is almost November, a perfect time to not be in good form - most people take an “off-season” this time of year) is totally worth it.

For me, healing time seemed to take forever - but now that I am on the other side, it wasn’t the end of the world. I kind of regret not shutting everything down early on. Live and learn. I thought I was doing everything right at the time, I guess that’s part of the process.

Feel free to reach out via my webpage if you have any specific questions.

I also wrote some blogs on my injury at linseycorbin.com / http://www.linseycorbin.com/blog/ - starting in mid-May.

Good luck!

linsey corbin

Hi Linsey,

Thank you so much for sharing your experience. I’m so sorry you went through such a tough time. I knew you had a stress fracture but didn’t realize it was in the femoral neck. I’m glad to learn you had a good MRI result recently. I read through your blog posts and can totally relate.

I caught pneumonia a couple weeks after my SF diagnosis and was couch bound for almost 6 weeks. But as soon as the antibiotics did their magic, I started cross training with swimming and cycling on the dirt roads at a very easy pace. I did try and stay in the parameters of my doctor and PT’s recommendations but it was still too much according to my second MRI. I’m now finally realizing I need to take a different approach if I want to finally heal.

I’m signed up for PR 70.3 this March but it may not be a reality if I don’t heal in time. I’ve been very stressed over this which is probably not helping with the healing process. I think it’s time to just let go and let my body heal when it’s ready. And hopefully my third MRI at the end of December will be good news.

I love your post on the orange sofa. I’ll be sitting on our blue sofa quite a bit the next few weeks.

Again, thanks for the post! I really do appreciate it!

Best,
Joyce