The Armour Archive

For those of you that need to fight with a knee brace:

1. What kind of brace do you use - one with the metal sides or just a velcro wrap or something else?

2. What style of knee cops do you use with the brace? Did you find you needed to make one knee larger than the other to fit your brace comfortably?

3. How do you fight from your knees with the brace? Do you kneel on your good knee with your bad knee up? Or some other method?

My armorer is going to make me a new set of knees and I'm trying to figure out which direction to go. If you have pictures that would be great.

Thanks in advance!

Tasia

Duke John the Mad Celt fights with a hinged knee brace; not sure if the sides are metal or synthetic. He uses leather greaves that extend to cover the knees. As for kneeling -- to be honest, I can't remember him ever losing a leg, so maybe the subject just doesn't come up.

http://www.donjoy.com/
http://www.djortho.com/index.asp/fuseac ... ners.faces

I have a friend that uses this. He said that his insurance paid all but $17 of the $975 cost, and would have paid at much of the differerence between that and the $1200cost of the Donjoy Armor version (this is apparently customized with the patient's designs.

He also said that Donjoy covered the replacement costs if you ruined it by fighting/football/hockey, etc. They are custom fitted titanium.

Donjoy are excellent. It's what I had for fighting after I blew out my ACL and had it repaired...

JP

On my left knee, I wear a hinged brace whenever I fight. On my right knee I wear a brace, often an old one when I fight a lot. I view doing this as preventive maitenance. Also, when I go swimming, if I have a chance, I "bicycle" for about 10-15 minutes to flex my knees without any weight on them.

As for armor, if you have to a brace, you might want to talk to an armorer about something custom built. It's more expensive, but in the long run you'll be heathier.

Mord.

Donjoy is what I wear. Titanium. It rocks. I am using some 14 gauge Archers knees currently, and am working on converting to some blown plastic cops that I got from Drakkos out in Detroit.

You HAVE to make sure that the brace fits, and you HAVE to make sure that it does not slide. I have had 4 knee surgeries, and the last 3 were because my brace slid and fulcrumed wrong, and literally yanked the top of my knee away from the bottom, re-snapping the acl, retearing the MCL and PCL, and ripping my meniscus in half.

Balynar wrote:Donjoy is what I wear. Titanium. It rocks. I am using some 14 gauge Archers knees currently, and am working on converting to some blown plastic cops that I got from Drakkos out in Detroit.

You HAVE to make sure that the brace fits, and you HAVE to make sure that it does not slide. I have had 4 knee surgeries, and the last 3 were because my brace slid and fulcrumed wrong, and literally yanked the top of my knee away from the bottom, re-snapping the acl, retearing the MCL and PCL, and ripping my meniscus in half.

What was the extent of your ACL tear before re-injury and what corrective surgery did you undergo? Thanks.

My ACL was completely torn in half. I was given the option of either having a new tendon "harvested" from other tendons in my body...usually the hamstring or petalla tendon, or by having a tendon implanted from a cadaver.

They both have their plusses and minuses. The harvesting insures that you have nothing "foreign" introduced into your body. A cadaver tendon has a very small percentage of being rejected, and an even smaller (miniscule) chance that you may acquire some disease that the cadaver might have had. But, harvesting does weaken the area that they harvest from, and you run the risk of rupturing that tendon as well , ending up with a bad ACL AND a bad hamstring or patella.

I went with the cadaver tendon. Most diseases are not really transportable via muscular tissue, and I felt that I didn't want anything harvested because I was already using those tendons for other things. Another problem with the cadaver tendon is that it is not really alive in your knee for about 6-8 weeks, which is the time it takes for blood vessels and whatnot to attach itself to the tendon. But once those attach, whatever flexibility you have is the flexibility you have. It will not stretch any more.

Because of this, I was in PT THE DAY AFTER surgery, and 3 times a week for months. Leg muscles atrophy at a phenominal rate too. Not walking for even a week will turn a once tree-trunklike leg into a noodly appendage. I was down for a while, so I had to work on the flexibility, and I had to rebuild all the muscles in my leg. Took me about 16 months to get back to the point I was before the injury, and then the ill fitting brace destroyed the knee again.

Balynar wrote:My ACL was completely torn in half.

Because of this, I was in PT THE DAY AFTER surgery, and 3 times a week for months. Leg muscles atrophy at a phenominal rate too. Not walking for even a week will turn a once tree-trunklike leg into a noodly appendage. I was down for a while, so I had to work on the flexibility, and I had to rebuild all the muscles in my leg. Took me about 16 months to get back to the point I was before the injury, and then the ill fitting brace destroyed the knee again.

I've had ACL reconstruction surgery on both knees now using my own hamstrings (still in recovery from the 2nd). My surgeon is a sports medicine surgeon who only does knees and shoulders. He was pretty adamant that I should rely on the strength of my own muscles versus the support of a brace. He says that after a time, the brace will only serve to remind you of the injury such that you're more cautious about it. The caveat to relying on the muscles however, is that you have to consciously work on building them up so that they are as strong or stronger than they were pre-injury. After my first surgery I went back to fighting with little issue. The funny part was that my "good" knee then broke, which seems to support my surgeons statement that after a year, the hamstring graft SHOULD be stronger than your actual ACL. Regardless, my plan is to work out like crazy, forsake the braces, and run willy nilly and unhindered upon the field!

Note: Results may vary. . .

My doctor more or less agreed with Cassandra. Use the brace while the body is still recovering, and then wean yourself off of it.

I used mine for 1 year or so, then stopped.

4 years later, I threw it away.

JP