Athletes, Survivorship Bias, & Avoiding Unnecessary Injuries
Post last modified 2 weeks ago.
I love the intensity that many top athletes train with.
It’s awesome.
But it’s frustrating to see so many of them beat the living heck out of their joints during conditioning sessions, though. Today I was watching a video of a quite-educated fellow training a group of elite fighters. And boy, were they training hard.
They weren’t training smart, though. (As the story goes time and time again).
This fighters already take so much abuse during their martial arts training. Now they were adding even more abuse to their joints on top of that.
Explosive movements.
Throwing weights around.
Poor form.
Plenty of shoulder impingement and intervertebral-disc abuse.
It was inspiring, but left much to be desired. These athletes pay so much attention to their martial-arts technique, while neglecting their exercise acumen.
It’s like being a gun slinger or playing Russian roulette… it might work out in the long run, but they gotta be damn lucky.
This is an example of "survivorship bias." Avoid this trap!
I’ve written this before–I’ll say it again. Find a way to make what is wanted congruent with what is needed. It’s awesome to bust one’s hump and work hard. But it needs to be done in a way that isn’t adding unnecessary mileage to the joints. Even very-smart people, like the highly-educated coach who was running that group-training session for those fighters, can miss something so simple.
The bones, joints, and connective tissues can only take so much abuse. Keep abusing them, they’ll break long before their time. And it’s very hard to compete successfully as an athlete when chronically injured.
There are so many ways to stimulate the body to produce adaptive responses to exercise, while minimizing the wear-and-tear on the joints and connective tissues. It is highly unnecessary for coaches and athletes to skip the latter.
And if you are the athlete who gets injured exercising unsafely, trust me . . . most coaches aren't going to take credit for that incident . . .
No one cares as much as you do about your athletic career and it's long-term prospects and success, so . . .