Just watched some basketball and parkour videos and I was wondering how their bodies can handle it
In: Biology
They don’t. And they often suffer later in life. That’s the toll of professional sports.
Gymnasts and ballet dancers often end up with severe problems, sometimes crippled, because of it. They can literally give themselves joint hypermobility syndrome (which is usually genetic but can also occur through deterioration of the joints from, mostly, professional sports). That can put you in a wheelchair. You might still be able to put your leg behind your head, but your knee won’t support your weight without extreme chronic pain. My ex- suffered with it (3rd Dan karate black-belt, registered disabled).
Athletes rarely are athletes later in life for a reason, not just that they can’t compete on the same level but they often have severe repercussions of their professional careers. Footballers with knees that never work properly again, ballet dancers unable to walk, rugby players with severe head trauma, weightlifters with terrible back problems, etc. Youth soccer (football) players have just had laws introduced to stop them heading balls as a lifetime of doing that can give you severe brain damage, same as American footballers have suffered similar problems with body impacts.
Even just runners are destroying their knees. At the top levels they are choosing to sacrifice their long term health for short term extreme gain, and they know that. The successes will make enough money to pay for expensive treatments, and many will do it for the love of their sport, but it’s often at a cost in their later years. Health insurance is almost compulsory in those careers and is seen as a huge necessity.
They can’t stop it, they can only manage it, and they won’t become professional without knowing the risk of their future lives, even if they never suffer a direct debilitating injury in an incident (which is also far more likely for an athlete, e.g. a runner to break an ankle, etc.).
There will come a time where they will probably wish they hadn’t done it, and their consolation will be the money and lifestyle that it’s given them, but for every professional athlete living a celebrity life, there are thousands of “ex-professional” sports people who can never play the sport again and suffer in their daily lives for their earlier career.
They cant!
Thats why you dont see people in thier 60s.
Somewhere around year 30-40 the worsening health overlapse the experience and expertize and the young overtakes em.
I know the Paleo guy Mark Sisson, who used to do a lot of marathons and triathlons, has said that many of his former co – competitors have had hip and knee replacement surgeries. He advocates exercise that causes much less repetitive stress for that reason.
I’ve got to plug kneesovertoesguy for anyone here worried about the longevity of their knees. Look him up on YouTube it’s really good stuff for athletes and people in general to improve the condition of your joints.
To add on what some other people are saying, many professional athletes have adopted techniques which minimize the impact. Running is the best example. If you do it wrong (landing on your heels), then you’re going to destroy your knees and hips in no time. If you land on the balls of your feet with your knees slightly bent then your ankles act like a spring and absorb much of the impact. Of course damage will still be done over time, but not nearly as quickly.
Basically the way you exercise has a massive effect on how much and how quickly you’re damaging your body
Lol. The fact that none of the top comments talk about drugs is a testament to how ignorant the people giving answers are. The answer you’re looking for is a cocktail of HGH, Test, and a mileu of other compounds.
So is the science behind this idea that gives us the ‘recommended’ doses of exercise to maximize longevity of the joints and other functions or are those things designed to keep us energized but sacrificing some longevity?
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