Five Months On From a Full Pec Tear

Five months ago I ruptured my pec at jiu jitsu. I'd just finished teaching a two hour class, which sounds like it involves a lot of movement, but it’s really just standing around talking. So at the end of the class, with no warm up, I jumped into King of the Mat.

I started on top in side control. I've got a move I like from this position. I let the person on the bottom work an underhook, which feels like progress for them, then slide into kesa gatame, the scarf hold. From there I set up a chest compression, the same squeeze Josh Barnett famously used to submit Dean Lister at Metamoris, and to make life worse for the poor soul underneath I reach back and hook their far leg.

So that's where I was. I pulled the leg in, my partner extended hard against it, and my pec major gave way. A full rupture of the sternal head.

The weird thing was it barely hurt. I just couldn't lift my arm. I couldn't move it at all really, which I found to be more unsettling than if I was in pain. So I did what any sensible person would do: I had a quick shower and drove myself to hospital… In a manual.

Surgery

An MRI scan confirmed the damage. I'd torn the muscle off the tendon, which is less common than tearing the tendon off the bone. Muscle notoriously doesn't hold stitches well. My surgeon told me beforehand he wasn't sure how the reattachment would go. His comparison was that it's like trying to sew a wet steak, which is an image I could have lived without. What saved the repair was that the clavicular head, the upper part of the pec, was still intact.

So two weeks after the injury I was in surgery for four hours to have my torn pec stitched onto my humerus, bypassing the tendon completely.

That was the structure sorted. The surgeon had finished his job and I had months of my own work ahead of me.

Recovery

For the first 6 weeks, I had to wear a sling pretty much 24/7. No upper body work at all, just rest to let it heal. For someone who’s used to training regularly, this was a strange and frustrating way to live. Weeks 6 to 9 focused on improving range of motion and gaining flexibility, slowly convincing the arm it was allowed to move again. After that I was finally cleared to start lifting weight, and by weight, I mean minimal weight. Weights my nan would find insulting. I’d look at what I was lifting, remember what I used to lift, and feel so far away I might as well have been on another planet.

Five months on, I'm now at about seventy percent. I'm cleared for light drilling but not full rolling, and my range of motion still needs work. A full return to training can take up to a year after this kind of injury.

I keep reminding myself not to rush it. The mats aren't going anywhere. If I go back too early, there’s a chance I could go straight back to the beginning, and I don’t want to drive a manual with one functioning arm again.

Rehab

If you’re here looking for practical advice from this post, here it is.

The surgery and the rest both matter, but once you're cleared to start physical therapy you have to get stuck in. Find a physio who knows sport, ideally one who understands the thing you're trying to get back to, and then do what they give you. All of it. Including the boring exercises that feel like they're doing nothing – they’re doing more than you realise. And even on the days you're tired and could easily skip them.

A lot of it is repetitive, but it works. You turn up, you do the reps, you trust it's compounding, and you stay consistent even when progress feels slow.

Training around it

Since I couldn't use my chest or shoulder, I trained everything else: running, more core work, plenty of legs. I did what my body allowed, and it turned out to be a positive change. There's plenty of useful training that gets pushed aside when life is busy and the week only has so many hours in it. Suddenly I had time for all of it.

If you're injured right now, something to keep in mind is that one door has shut, not the whole building. You might even come back having improved something you'd never had the time to work on before.

Still learning

The mats might be off limits, but learning isn't. I’m watching footage, working through instructional tutorials, reading. I’ve gone back through my old journal entries and discovered patterns, things which keep tripping me up. I’ve set new goals for when I’m finally able to return to the mats. When you're training week in week out you rarely get time to sit and study like that. An injury hands you the time whether you asked for it or not.

Stay curious through the layoff and you come back with a sharper understanding of the game, even while the body is still catching up.

Key takeaways

From my injury come two key takeaways, or my “new pec resolutions”.

Firstly, warm up. Every time. Properly. No matter how good I feel. I went into hard rounds stone cold after two hours of teaching. Tearing the muscle clean off the tendon is uncommon and I got unlucky. Cold muscle under sudden load is a risk that can be eliminated by a simple 5 minute warm up.

And secondly, train at about sixty percent. Training is for learning. It's where you try things, get them wrong and slowly work them out, and that doesn't happen if you treat every round like a title fight. Save the hundred percent for competition, or for a day you genuinely need it. The humbling part of my story is that I didn't even go that hard. One squeeze a fraction too firm without warming up, and I'm looking at the best part of a year to get back to full training.

I'm not there yet, but I'm a long way from where I started. I've stayed fit, had time to reflect on where I went wrong and what I can do better, and I know my own body far better than I did five months ago. The next few months will be more of the same, slow steady work in the right direction, and I'm looking forward to getting back on the mats when I'm ready.