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Schumacher's fitness allowed him to recover quicker says doctor
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08 March 2010 @ 17:10 GMT - Charles Cooper Michael Schumacher's doctor Johannes Peil says his neck injury caused by a motorcycle accident last year was very serious. After the accident he was sent home and only when Peil examined him did they realise how serious it was. "It was quite alarming because when they initially checked him out in Spain, they sent him home, saying everything was fine, but we carried out a diagnosis as soon as he came to us, and we soon realised how serious his injuries were," Peil said. "So we set about immediately to help him out, as a patient, and a human being, to facilitate his return to health," he explained. The seven times world champion continued fitness training after he retired and that is a key factor in his recuperation. "Thank God he had stuck with us and kept up his fitness, obviously not to the intensity he had when he was still competing. But he was in fact much more physically active in retirement than many of the drivers on the track. He had always seen himself as a sportsman, and so he had continued with things like football and worked on his stamina and precision," he said. |
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After the accident the German was not able to follow an intensive training program. Schumacher's recovery programme focused first and foremost on intensive physiotherapy sessions and he underwent three to four hours of physio every day in the first few months.
"He had serious rotation movement problems between the head and neck, and the physio focused on extension mobilisation. There was a lot of manual therapy and therapy focused on building up the muscles," he said.
"When you have an injury like that you have to look at muscular compensation - that is to say that the injury will never be completely healed, but what you can do is compensate for it by building up the muscles around that area," he said.
"We used a neck machine specially designed for Formula One drivers, to stabilise and strengthen his neck," he said. Schumacher trained up to six hours a day, and spent much of his time at Bad Nauheim.
The sports training concentrated on improving his physical strength, his reaction time, his coordination and flexibility. "The key is to try out how for an individual all these elements are best fitted together in a training programme, and once you've worked it out, it's very exciting," said Peil.