My WAG is that the system was not built to lift more weight and so something like a failure in the joint or bone would occur.
Any reason to believe that such is the case? Or is that “probably” just something you are guessing at? My vote is that if that was true it “probably” would be something that would be easy find in some news report or in the literature …
Just a guess based on a lot of time spent with people with cerebral palsy, their lack of control often results in muscles or ligament or tendon pairs that don’t match in size (usually length) the way they should, and they end up with joints that are tight, and limit their range of motion. The old way of fixing it used to be to cut slits in the short side to let it lengthen, then do lots of therapy to build it up (think about taking a thick rubber band, and making alternating tiny snips on each side, so it will stretch more, but won’t be as strong). Now, the same thing is done non-surgically, with Botox injections.
Anyway, maybe the surgery produced unbalanced tendon pairs that made joints tight, or made muscle pairs unmatched, so that it was actually harder to use the limb.
Based on my own experience with tendon reattachment surgery, it takes a LONG time to heal and rehab the injury. In my case, I had a uncomplicated complete tear of my patellar tendon on Jan 4th, had surgery on Jan 5th to reattach it, and was in a total immobilizer for 3 more weeks. Starting at that point, I could do some pretty mild PT, which ramped up over time, until the first week or so of June, when I was doing full squats and knee bends and had full ROM back. That doesn’t mean that I was in full athletic shape, but that I was good enough to not need physical therapy anymore.
It still doesn’t feel “right”, and I still run kind of goofy, although most of that’s practice and getting used to the new feel. And I’m a 41 year old couch potato- I can’t imagine taking a elite athlete and putting them through all that just on the off chance that everything worked BETTER than before. Chances are, it’ll be worse.
Well you are not changing the muscle structure. Sorry if that sounds pedantic but it is important. You are changing where the muscle of a particular structure, attached to motor neurons firing in particular patterns due to brain derived control, attaches to the bone. The muscle structure is built to function best at a different length than that one …
But the other point is a bigger one: accepting for the sake of discussion that this could work (which again makes no sense to me that it would) what exact event is it that requires specific maximal peak strength in elbow flexion and only that very specific motion, that very limited task? Pretty much all Olympic lifting is a whole body affair, much more akin to throwing than to an isolated partial curl.
Yeah, and I think with our muscles have other apparent inefficiencies.
For example, I recall being taught that where a nerve attaches to a muscle, there is something like a synapse, where an electrical potential causes the release of a chemical transmitter, which in turn causes an electric pulse which makes the muscle contract. And there is no apparent reason for doing this; all it does is make muscle tissue slightly slower at responding to impulses.
disclaimer: As you may guess from my vague language, I studied this many years ago, and my recollection may not be so good.
Heh. Now I’m getting a mental image of Ted Stryker and his “drinking problem.” 