The Warrior And His War. Kevin Durant: Calf Injury, When Will He Be Back?

To understand the current calf injury that Mr. Kevin Durant suffered few days ago, we should start reviewing his injury history. In 2015 he had surgery 3 times thanks to an initial Jones fracture. What is that? Simply put a fracture of the 5^th metatarsal, in his case it was most probably due to an overload of the area caused by inadequate mechanics.

The pictures below show that since early on in his career, there has been a pattern of movement that precisely loads the damaged foot’s region.

To simply understand how this happens, imagine that his foot is prepared to deal with his 240 pounds every time that he lands, changes direction, pushes off, etc. If the load is distributed across a smaller or inadequate anatomical area than the particular technique requires the structure can give up and get injured.

Why? Because when a bone area is loaded beyond its capacity, it can decrease the quality of the bone and as a consequence the “material resistance” as well (meaning how well the bone material is organized, how “good” is the material’s quality and how much material is available to effectively do its job). Over time, the probability of the structure breaking increases. (See pics. bellow).

This picture shows different stages of density and organization of the material. When there is overload in a bone the material quantity, the material quality and/or the material distribution can change, decreasing the resistance of the bone while increasing the risk of fractures.

 

Now you might ask how this is related to the calf injury today. It is true that we never have the full disclosure of each injury’s real history, or the complete medical diagnosis. However, we can play detective, and produce the most probable explanation considering the available data.

If the mechanics are the most feasible cause of the foot fracture in 2015, it is likely that other tissues have been affected as well.

After the foot injury’s recovery, we can see (watch the pictures above again!) that he never changed the mechanics of his movements, which in all likelihood caused the injury in the first place. Therefore, one factor that might be contributing to his current calf problem is the uneven load applied to his leg.

But also, along with the technique problem, we know that the relationship between game-training loads and rest in this stage of the NBA tournament is inadequate for a

full/healthy athlete’s recovery. The accumulation of lactic acid in such intense games, together with physiological limitations to remove quickly lactic acid creates a propitious biochemical environment for muscle damage (considering that most of the conditional training is high intensity! Just watch the videos on YouTube and you will see running hills, weights, sprints, etc. Those are all activities that don’t develop the system for removal of lactic acid).

So, as an athlete of mine asked me, can we know when he will be back? And, will he be safe?

First, an injury of this type requires:

1)   Full recovery of the structure (muscle) that is only possible after several months of rest and rehabilitation;

2)   Change in mechanics to avoid overload of the already damaged structure;

3)   Increment in physiological capacity to efficiently remove lactic acid.

Since the previous is not going to happen because there is no time (and if they have not implemented this process yet, why would it happen now?), my educated guess is that he will be numbing the area in some way or playing with pain.

Will he be safe? No! Without perception of pain he will load the area more than the structure can resist and eventually damage the muscle further...maybe Mr. Durant will get lucky and just get the “ring” before this happens!