distal bicept rupture repair

[bornagain82]

I am a 38 year old male who last year had a complete rupture of my left bicep (distal). I had the two incision repair and my arm is doing fine now ,however my doctor says that I am a "strange case" in that I was a former strongman, and he really does not know what limits to put on my lifting with my repaired arm. He told me not to curl anything heavier than 60lbs with the injured but does not know about deadlifts or shrugs ect ect
The deadlifts worry me as I was flipping a 1000 lb tire when i tore the bicep.
I am 7 months out from the surgery and things are starting to get to easy for me but I do not want to rerupture my bicep .
any insight would be appreciated

[yitmy]

Thats pretty difficult to give you any feedback on. The reason is that there really is no scientific studies which indicate when a muscle will rupture. So your physician is giving you the best advice he can. If you want to continue with the strong man competitions you really should strengthen your body maximally. You could use other muscles when flipping a tire. But who is to say they won't rupture either from the elevated loads placed on them. Sorry bud I got nothing else to say.

[braindx]

Work your way back VERY conservatively.

Might be a good idea to contact some other strongmen and ask them if they knew if anyone had this problem before (I'm sure they have) and what you can do to recover from it.

[bornagain82]

thanks for the insight .....I am not looking to compete in strongman anymore those days have been over. I just want to go back to regular weight training, and get reasonably strong again but without the risk of a rerupture

[thankschub]

Perhaps i can shed a little light on the subject. I had the same injury and the same reconstructive surgery as you 6 years ago. I am now 59 years old and have no problems whatsoever with that arm. For the first 3 or 4 years I would occasionally become aware of the attachment point at the elbow. It wasn't pain, just kind of a creepy feeling. It finally went away,though. My work requires lifting 55 to 85 pounds many times a day. I found my bicep would let me know if I was overdoing it, and I would just back off some. It only took about 1 year to be completely back to 100% strength and mobility.

Fast forward to now. I have recently been doing Starting Strength and although I'm no strong man I'm doing OK for my size. I have been very pleased to find that the arm has been a complete non-issue. This is a long winded way of saying I think you'll be just fine. I would suggest you go a bit carefully for a while, and take heed of any warnings from the bicep. Good Luck.