NFL Draft Prospect Billy Price Injury Discussion

The NFL Combine is underway and on Friday running backs and offensive linemen were at the Lucas Oil Stadiums. Often dubbed as the “Underwear Olympics” where the some of the nation’s best college football prospects put their athleticism on display. Although you can argue if running a 40-yard dash, 225 bench, vertical jump, broad jump, and other change of direction drills translate onto the field.

A few hours into day one and Ohio State center Billy Price suffered a pectoral muscle injury during the bench press.

It has been confirmed that he has a partial tear of his pectoral muscle. Pectoral muscle damages usually occur suddenly under high intensity work, in this case, bench pressing 225 pounds as many times as you can. They can also tear due to repetitive stress injury too, which bench pressing as many times as you can would fall into this category as well.

An MRI will confirm how severe the damage is. Also another major influence on his recovery, will be the location of the tear. Given where he was grabbing, it appears he damaged the portion of the pectoralis muscle closer to the insertion at the humerus in comparison to the attachment site at the sternum or the clavicle.

Anatomy Review:

There chest muscles are formed by two different muscles: the pectoralis major and the pectoralis minor. The pectoralis major is superficial in comparisons to the pectoralis minor. It’s more commonly recognized and the muscle that was damaged in the bench press. The pectoralis major allows for a lot of different movements at the shoulder given that it attaches on the front portion of the humerus.

Functions of the pectoralis major: internal rotation of the shoulder, horizontal adduction of the shoulder, shoulder flexion, shoulder adduction.

 

The pectoralis minor is located deep to the pectoralis major muscle. It’s function are to help depress the scapulae. It is also considered an accessory muscle of inspiration, assisting in elevating the rib cage. It’s unlikely he suffered any damage to the pectoralis minor.

Pectoralis Tear Classification:
Grade I: Commonly occurring at the musculotendinous site and less likely at the muscle belly. Common strain-type injury that may take several days up to a week for recovery.
Grade II: Some disruption of muscle fibers. Damage will result in some loss of function and physical therapy may be required. Recovery can range from several weeks up to months depending on severity of tear.
Grade III: Complete tear. Surgery is required and several months of recovery is required six to nine months.

What Could I Do:

If it’s just a strain, we’ll do a lot of manual on his pectoralis muscle. Through manual work that’s non-invasive, promoting blood flow to the damaged area to help with the recovery process.

From a manual component, the primary treatment is Active Release Technique. In terms of exercise recovery, treatment will go as followed:

Isometric Exercises – Concentric Exercises – Eccentric Exercises. No he won’t just go back to benching or doing push-ups as his rehabilitation. Eventually it will be worked into this rehabilitation care, but not in the interim.

But as we mentioned before the Pectoralis Major has numerous movements of the shoulder. So exercises will have to focus on all different movements that the Pectoralis Major can do: flexion, internal rotation, adduction, horizontal adduction.

My Take:

According to Adam Schefter, NFL insider, he’ll be back for the start of training camp. He will miss OTAs and mini-camps while continuing to recover. Hopefully this doesn’t affect his draft stock and regardless of surgery or not. Just a concern of mine is that if he doesn’t opt for surgery and allows to naturally heal on it’s own through manual care and rehabilitation (which he would have to do if he doesn’t get surgery), to make sure the muscle has fully healed so that he doesn’t have it linger when Week 8, 9, or 10 hits.