Sports Injury: how much force does it take to snap a leg?
The lower leg of MMA fighter Richard Palencia visibly snapped during a match. The twist — Palencia was the one doing the kicking.
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Warning: Some of the links in this article depict the bones depict the injury occurring.
Mixed martial arts fighter Richard Palencia went down in the second round of his bout with Cee Jay Hamilton, but not because of anything Hamilton did. Palencia kicked Hamilton, with each of their shins making significant contact. After stepping back, Palencia’s lower leg visibly snapped, with a groan of disgust from the audience.
The injury is similar to the UFC’s Chris Weidman’s gruesome injuryfrom 2021, snapping his leg in half on the first kick of his fight against Uriah Hall. That isn’t even the first time Weidman had been involved in a terrible leg break. UFC legend Anderson Silva broke his leg over Weidman in 2013.
Hamilton officially won the October fight on a technical knockout after 17 seconds. The fight took place at Bellator 286 in Long Beach, California. Bellator is an MMA promotion, similar to the UFC.
How much force can an MMA fighter kick with?
A good martial artist can kick with more than 2,000 pounds or 900 kg of force, according to martial arts websiteCraft of Combat.
Palencia appears to be executing a calf kick, where the fighter strikes the opponent’s calf with the lower part of their shin or instep. If landed repeatedly, the kick can cause the calf muscle to tear or cramp. However, instead of connecting with the calf muscle, Palencia hit his shin against Hamilton’s, resulting in bone-on-bone contact.
The shin bone, or tibia, is one of two bones in that area of the leg — the other being the fibula, located behind the tibia. Since the tibia holds a significant amount of body weight, it is incredibly strong, especially when compared to the fibula.
Estimates vary on how much force the tibia can take, from just over200 lbs to roughly five times the body weight of its owner. For 136-pound Palencia, this would mean 200-680 lbs of force. Other conditions like previous injuries, the direction of impact and the concentration of the impact over a smaller surface area, all play into how much energy it would take to break this bone.
The strongest bone in the body,the femur (thigh bone), takes as much as 4,000 newtons, or nearly 900 pounds of force, to fracture.
How to recover from a broken tibia?
The first thing that someone with a broken tibia will get is a cast. Surgery may also be required, in which case a doctor will have toreposition and connect the two sections of the bone.
But that is only the start. After the cast comes off, there will be months of physical therapy needed to rebuild the strength that the bone once had, especially for an MMA fighter.
The first rounds of physical therapy will includestretches and gentle strengthening, followed by the use of light weights. From there, more and more activity will be allowed, provided there are physical therapists around and aiding.
The average time to recover from a broken tibia isfour to six months. That is not including time for Palencia to get his leg back into fighting condition, which could take much longer. The aforementioned Anderson Silva didn’t fight for more than a full calendar year after breaking his leg (whichwas reset with an intramedullary rod.) Chris Weidman’s last fight was in April 2021, with no timeline for him to return to the octagon as of yet.
Chris Arnold is a Toronto-based writer.
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