The Problem with Recreational Sports
The Majority recreational athlete between the age of 18 and 70 should not be playing sports at all.
This statement sounds like click bait…but it is 100% true
One of the main demographics of clients that we get at Black Flag Gym are recreational athletes, or people hoping to get back into recreational sports. This can range from ex-collegiate athletes revisiting their old sport to golfers or tennis players looking to improve their swing power and flexibility to further their game.
The one common factor that we see amongst the vast majority of recreational athletes…they do nothing to prepare for their sport.
Why do elite athletes train for their sport?
The obvious answer to this is that elite athletes want to perform at the highest level. Of course they are going to train more intensely and consistently than a 45 year old father who plays basketball on the weekends in a recreational league.
The less obvious, and far more important answer is to prepare their body for the massive forces related to explosive movements, preventing potential injury. This is FAR more important to that 45 year old dad.
To properly make my point, it is important for you to understand what intensity it. When it comes to sport science, intensity is directly related to weight and speed. To simplify, the higher the weight or force, the higher the intensity. The faster an exercise is performed, the more intense it is.
A simple and easily understood example of this is a sprint vs a marathon. A 100 meter sprint at a max speed, is substantially more intense than a marathon at pace. And a 500lb squat is more intense than a bodyweight squat (this one is a little more obvious). How does this effect a recreational athlete? Think about the speed that you are swinging a golf club. Or cutting quickly to get the ball during a tennis match. Or leaping to pull down that rebound for your rec team. These forces can me massive, and thus run a relatively higher chance of injury, especially when the musculature and tendons were not trained to take those forces.
Well how intense could my sport really be? Its just for fun…
Here are a just a few of the forces that are applied to your body during basic athletic activites:
Running - Studies show that the force passing through a runners joints can be upwards of 3 - 4 x body weight… meaning a 160lb runner can be experiencing forces upwards of 640lbs. This force passes through your legs 800-1000 times during an average mile. These are average forces during a distance run, not even the forces related to sprinting…
Jumping - Forces at the knee are 2.4 - 4.6 x body weight at the patellofemoral joint and 6.9 - 9.0 × body weight at the tibiofemoral joint. For the same 160lb athlete this means the peak forces on the knee joint during a jump is a whopping 1,440lbs!
Golf - A golf swing has been estimated to apply 8 x body weight in compressive force through the spine. This is roughly the same force that a football lineman hits their opponent with… now think of going out to the driving range and hitting 100 balls. 100 compressive forces of over 1200lbs.
Still sound like that fun rec game isn’t that intense? this is one of the most misunderstood elements of “recreational” athletics. Yes they are fun. No, you should not be playing them unless you are training to do so.
Unless you are training in the gym to make absolutely certain that your joints, muscles, and connective tissue are conditioned to support these forces, you have no business stepping into a sporting event.
This is not to tell you that you cannot play golf. Or join your local tennis club. Or spend the weekend playing beach volleyball with friends. It is to remind you that you MUST take injury prevention seriously in the gym if you are going to do those things.
The NSCA recommends being able to squat 1.5 times your bodyweight in order to begin plyometric lower body exercises (ie jumping, explosive triple extension in golf, sprinting, cutting, etc). How many recreational athletes do you think actually meet this requirement? Do you? Let us help you get there so you can play your favorite sport pain and injury free.
Citations:
Running involves a high level of repetitive force. Running Injuries. (n.d.). https://www.chirohealthsolutions.net/storage/app/media/cropped_images/Running_injury_Report.pdf
Walker, C. T., Uribe, J. S., & Porter, R. W. (2019). Golf: a contact sport. Repetitive traumatic discopathy may be the driver of early lumbar degeneration in modern-era golfers. Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine, 31(6), 914–917. https://doi.org/10.3171/2018.10.SPINE181113
Cleather, D. J., Goodwin, J. E., & Bull, A. M. J. (2013). Hip and knee joint loading during vertical jumping and push jerking. Clinical Biomechanics, 28(1), 98–103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clinbiomech.2012.10.006