Accelerated Return to Competition Following a Full-Thickness Abdominal Wall Tear in an Elite Sprinter: A Data-informed Case Report.
Paul Carragher, Frank O'Leary, Kate Kirby and 3 others
A 22-year-old sprinter with a full-thickness tear of three abdominal muscles returned to competition in 28 days and set a personal best, using early trunk loading and force profiling.
One athlete, one setting — not a template for all patients.
Key findings
1The athlete sustained a full-thickness tear of the left external oblique, internal oblique, and transversus abdominis at the level of the 11th and 12th ribs, and returned to competition at Day 28 recording a personal best of 10.08 s, after a four-component program of early trunk loading, modified then full S&C, progressive technical drills, and graded sprinting with objective force profiling.
2At the time of return (Day 16 testing), the athlete still showed asymmetry in general trunk tasks — vertical press at −14% and side bend at 18% — but near-symmetrical force in the two sprint-specific rotational tasks (rotational pull and sling rotation within ±6%), and the team used this task-specific pattern to justify progression to block accelerations.
3A repeat MRI at Day 74, performed with the same protocol and read by the same radiologist, showed almost full resolution of the three muscle tears.
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What it does not show
This is one athlete in one highly controlled performance environment; the authors themselves note this limits generalisability to broader populations. No EMG activation data, muscle architecture measurements, or broader functional testing were collected; the 1080 Quantum data cover only four selected exercises. The exercise prescription and progression were individualised and may not be fully reproducible, which the authors acknowledge as an inherent limitation of case-report methodology. The athlete's elite conditioning, motivation, and access to a dedicated performance team (Sport Ireland Institute) may have accelerated recovery relative to a typical patient. No normative thresholds for trunk force asymmetry exist for this population, so the ±10% acceptability band the team used was a clinical judgement, not an evidence-based cut-off. The tear dimensions were absent from the MRI report, so the exact size of the injury is unknown. Follow-up is limited to the athlete's return to training after his off-season break; there is no structured long-term outcome data on re-injury or performance trajectory. The study is retrospective with no experimental intervention, no control comparison, and no pre-registered primary outcome.
Declared interests
The authors report no conflicts of interest. No funding source is named in the text. The athlete trained at the Sport Ireland Institute, and the corresponding author is based there, but no explicit financial relationship or sponsorship of the study is declared.
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