WALES CAPTAIN SAM Warburton is hoping to return to fitness in time to face Ireland in next weekend’s crunch Six Nations meeting in Cardiff.
A knee injury forced the openside out of Wales’ impressive victory over France on Saturday, but speaking with WalesOnline, he described how the recovery process from that injury began immediately.
“If you have had a bump, you have to go back to the team hotel and don’t bother with the dinner. Because if you are there you are away from the ice machine for three or four hours. The time immediately after an injury is the most important period to try and heal the problem,” says the last Lions skipper.
Warburton is describing a piece of equipment called a Game Ready – a plug-in unit that compresses and cools an injury. Last year, Rory McIlroy gave the world a glimpse of the machine in action when he was forced to R.I.C.E.
“You fill it with lots of ice and water and you compress the injury,” continues Warburton in the interview with WalesOnline.
“You put a knee strap around your knee and plug yourself in. Every two hours for about 20 minutes it pumps ice around and compresses your knee to help get rid of some of the inflammation.
The quicker you can get rid of some of that swelling, the sooner the healing can begin.”
The manufacturers of the machine claim that traditional methods of icing are ‘messy’ and ‘difficult to use’ while their product uses ‘NASA space suit technology’ to provide “both adjustable cold therapy and intermittent compression,” as it pumps water from the reservoir to the compress.
So did it work, Sam?
“After the initial 48 hours, it has got a lot better and I’ll be back to see the physios on Thursday but all the signs are positive.”
