Episode 55: "The Achilles Heel" - Risks and Reality of Sports Injuries

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• Joe Gambino
• Joe LaVacca

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Summary: 
In this episode of the Beyond Pain podcast, hosts Joe Gambino and Joe Lavaca discuss various aspects of injury prevention, focusing on the recent Achilles injury of NBA player Jason Tatum. 

They explore the complexities of injury prevention, the psychological impact of injuries on athletes, and the role of footwear technology in injury risk.

The conversation emphasizes the importance of understanding injury risks, the significance of previous injuries, and the need for a holistic approach to athlete health and performance.

Takeaways:

• Injury prevention is a buzzword, but true prevention is impossible.
• You can reduce injury risk by making your body more resilient.
• Previous injuries significantly increase the risk of future injuries.
• Injury rates in professional sports can fluctuate year to year.
• Psychological impacts of injuries can affect an athlete's performance and recovery.
• Footwear technology may contribute to injury risks in athletes.
• Training should focus on basics and not over-specialization in one sport.
• Athletes should be encouraged to engage in diverse physical activities.
• Understanding the demands of specific sports is crucial for injury prevention.
• Recovery strategies, including hydration and nutrition, are essential for injury mitigation.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Weekly Updates
• 2:39 Injury Prevention and the Achilles Injury Discussion
• 12:47 Understanding Injury Risks and Mitigation Strategies
• 20:36 The Psychological Impact of Injuries
• 27:53 Footwear Technology and Its Impact on Injuries

Transcript

Joe Gambino (00:00)
Welcome back into the Beyond Pain podcast. am one of your hosts, Joe Gambino, and I'm here with the other host here, Joe LaVacca You can find us on Instagram. I am at Joe Gambino, DTT, and Lavaca over there is at strength and motion underscore PT. You can find this podcast on Instagram, Beyond Pain podcast, and on YouTube, cups of Joe underscore PT. think I nailed it there, Joe. Welcome back.

Joe Gambino (00:24)
You have been nailing it. You're on a solid streak. And it really is just because you took out a lot of praise for me. It kept you on your game. Shouldn't have. Is that what you just said? Shouldn't have? Hey, man, look, you did that. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't ask for that. You did it. And then it was just like a nice thing. It was just a nice thing that you were doing. And I looked forward to it. I think the listeners looked forward to it and now it's not there anymore. And we're just all wondering, you know, if and when it'll ever come back.

Joe Gambino (00:31)
We shouldn't have been there in the first place, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're bringing it the other way now, Joe. We're bringing the other way. We're grounding you.

I know,

I don't know man, it's streamlined, it's quick, it just flows nice. not searching for it, so here we are.

Joe Gambino (01:02)
Right, right, right.

man, what's going on? How was your week? Everything ⁓ going good in the clinic? saved anybody's life this week?

Joe Gambino (01:14)
I did not save anyone's life this week. ⁓ Clinic life is not too bad. actually have someone ⁓ in person in the community here, so I have them after this. So it's been nice to have a little in-person time again. ⁓ Otherwise, things are going pretty good over here. How about you?

Joe Gambino (01:30)
Good. Yeah. ⁓ I've saved at least six lives this week. ⁓ which is, down from the previous weeks, ⁓ not meeting my current quota is the, in person. was the, the gentleman you were talking to us about, I think about one podcast with some neck pain or something like that in the community. You guys are training now in the garage.

Joe Gambino (01:33)
⁓

Yeah

No,

no, this is a different person. Yes. Mm-hmm. Yep, so this is a different person actually with, made me think of him on our elbow episode, because he's elbow injury at heart. And then we were talking about how can we, do we address other areas? And then I did look at a lot from his shoulder after we did his like, mostly focused on his elbow for like,

Joe Gambino (01:49)
⁓ growing that in-person business in North Carolina. That's what we're talking about. All right.

okay.

Joe Gambino (02:17)
probably like a month straight. did a little bit of shoulder and hips. He has a lot of things going on. but I did more of my manual stuff and shoulder focused on that session and it like a huge impact on his elbow. so it to show, even though it seemed very, very much so, like a very typical, you know, tendonitis, tendon, apathy at the elbow, ⁓ the shoulder did play a huge role in it too. So you never know. Yeah. Pretty cool.

Joe Gambino (02:39)
No, very cool. Yeah, you never know.

That's why keep an open mind, check everything, find what matters, you know, all the normal things that we talk about on the podcast. And today we're talking about something exciting too. ⁓ For those in the industry or even not in the industry, the big story this week was obviously Jason Tatum's Achilles injury. And it was.

Joe Gambino (02:49)
Yeah.

Joe Gambino (03:08)
Very devastating. Obviously you never want that to happen to anyone in the context that happened to him in a playoff game. He's scoring 50 points. I kind of like Jason Tatum personally. I think he's a really good player. ⁓ he sort of like, I'm not saying he is, but he sort of like reminds me a little bit of Kobe, you know, and the way Kobe played and, again, just so we don't get hate mail. I'm not saying Jason Tatum is.

Joe Gambino (03:15)
Mm-mm.

I was gonna say it with lot, yourself.

Joe Gambino (03:37)
is Kobe Bryant. Yeah, well, no, to be determined, to be determined. No,

Joe Gambino (03:37)
You're saying he's better, right? You're saying he's better than Kobe?

Joe Gambino (03:42)
no, but no, I do, I do like him as a player. And, you know, it was fun to see him go back and forth, even though he was playing against my team. But naturally, and I'm sure you saw this, everyone started talking about Achilles injuries and his training and what we could have done for preventing things. So we're to talk a little bit about

Joe Gambino (03:56)
Hmm.

Joe Gambino (04:02)
Prevention, can we do that thing? Can we screen people? Do we know what to look for? What are the base rates of injury? So let's just start general. What is your opinion on injury prevention and how much people should be focusing on something like that with their rehab or prehab or anything else?

Joe Gambino (04:22)
Yep. So I think when we look at, mean, you can't, the word terms injury prevention, I know that's, that's buzzwordy. Um, you see it all the time on social media, you know, it's, but prevention is impossible. think, regardless of what you do, how you train, you can do everything perfect in the world. You will never escape the risk of injury, right? You can do the best that you can. You can reduce, you know, I believe you can definitely reduce your risk and you can make your body more resilient and

tolerant to stresses and forces, but at the end of the day, especially even for anybody, but especially at the NBA level or any professional sport, where they're putting their bodies through a lot, those things are bound to happen to some people at some point. You don't want to see it happen to some of the top players in the game and some of the most ⁓ pivotal moments when you're in the playoffs and you're trying to make a push and get to the finals. Probably would have been even more escalated if this was the finals. ⁓

All of sudden, think that would be even more talked about at that point. We see that, I've seen it football a bunch of times where injuries happen, all of sudden that rules, the game starts to change. So we might start to see that happening here at the NBA level now ⁓ with this going on. like I said, injury prevention is not really a thing, but we can do our best to mitigate injuries. So you can tell me what you think on that if you want to add anything, if you do believe prevention is true.

Joe Gambino (05:51)
No, I don't think so. yeah, then, then we sort of go into those like little conversations of, well, if we can't prevent, maybe we can reduce and sure, maybe that is the case. However, I do think that we over, we also overblow a lot of our screening tools and then give people maybe a little bit of a false belief. Well, if you just work on your hamstring strength,

or you work on slowing down your knee with your jump, or you work on this, you work on that, that you aren't going to get injured. And I think that's the wrong message. Now of most of the things with injury prevention I've seen or read, it seems more effective when you establish this at a team level rather than an individual level. So you want to get everyone on the team prepared. You want them to work on certain.

Capacities fine. I get that if you've already had an injury though Then yeah, maybe the way you land with your jump mechanics can potentially help you But the number one reason why people get hurt again or at all is Previous injury and I'm always reminded of the idea of the vulnerable organism model from Louie Gifford

You know, if one thing is hurt, the whole organism is going to behave differently. Now, just for recency bias, Tatum did sprain his wrist in the previous series when he fell. I'm not saying that's why he tore his Achilles, but it is an interesting correlation where, hey, one part of him was already a little bit hurt. Now he has an injury in the next series.

He could not have prevented either one in my opinion. And I think from what I'm hearing your opinion as well, but I kept seeing all these different ideas. Some people were on our side. Hey, you know what? This is just life. It's bad luck. It's bad luck. You play a sport, you have to accept the injury risk. And I did a little research. What do you think the injury risk for NBA players suffering Achilles injuries is year to year?

Joe Gambino (08:14)
I'm gonna say one in a thousand,

Joe Gambino (08:18)
It's pretty close. It's pretty close. About two to five of them happen per year and there's 450 players in the NBA. So that means that 0.2 % or 0.4 % of NBA players every year are likely to suffer an Achilles injury. Your point before is that you just don't want to see it happen to the guys you love. Other than Jason Tatum, do you know who else it happened to this year?

Joe Gambino (08:46)
I haven't followed basketball enough to answer that question.

Joe Gambino (08:48)
All right. Well, some big names. Damian Lillard was just also a couple of weeks ago in the first round of the playoffs. Right. So now we have two Achilles injuries to two superstars in the playoffs. And then what are people saying? The season's too long. We need it. We need prevention. We need, we need management of load. Okay. It was two people. Wouldn't.

Everyone else playing and not suffering an Achilles injury sort of like disprove that point. It also happened to DeWante Murray. DeWante Murray, this was in January 31st of this year. So middle of the season, how do we explain that one? James Weissman of the Indiana Pacers, his was October right in the beginning of the season. Maybe he wasn't prepared.

And then we have another one on Drew Smith. I've never heard of Drew Smith before, but again, I don't follow basketball that much and his was in December. So we have two in the beginning of the season, two at the end of the season, one in the middle of the season. How does that help us with load management in the NBA? I don't think it does. So when we're coming back around all this stuff, if you're going to play basketball or soccer,

or football, there has to be just certain injury acceptance or risk acceptance. And there's not going to be anything that we can do to mitigate that. But what if I told you I had a program that would reduce injuries by 50 %? Would you sign up Joe?

Joe Gambino (10:29)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we talked about on this podcast, launching our coffee fused collagen that's going to stop all injuries from happening ever again. you know, that's where we're at. But, you know, I think it's also ⁓ made even worse with the curry injury and there's a few other notable that are out. But, you know, actually talking about, ⁓ you know, with Tatum having like an injury previously, very recently, and then it's the, they had the Achilles tear this

Joe Gambino (10:38)
Yeah, exactly.

Joe Gambino (10:58)
Same thing happened to McCaffrey, late in the season and everyone was like, ah, know, I was playing in snow, blah, blah, blah. But dude had like a knee injury the week before, I think. And then he ended up having, it was an Achilles tear, right? So yeah, or was it a knee? I forget if it was a knee or an Achilles, but he had like a major, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Gambino (11:13)
from a Caffrey I Think I think he just I think he just had ⁓ yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He had just like

I think it was just chronic Achilles tendonitis. I don't think I don't think he ever tore

Joe Gambino (11:22)
He did, yes. He had to be in the

season, he had, ⁓ no, let me Google this real quick, because I feel like at the very end of the season, that snow game, ⁓ he had a major, major injury. ⁓ Yeah, PCL, he had a PCL injury. So, yeah, and I think a lot of it had to do with, right around that time, he had like a little bit of

Joe Gambino (11:37)
Is it McCaffrey? Yeah, one of the guys at the gym is a big 49er fan.

Joe Gambino (11:52)
flair of something and then you had like missed half the season or more than half the season with the the with the ⁓ you know the foot ankle tendinopathy whatever we want to call it so I mean this is it's part of life again especially at this level but let's bring this to then we can talk a little bit more about screening but I kind of want to bring this into you know this was just you know someone listen to this podcast who's a runner dealing with some some issues or someone who's lifting with

Now, how do we bring this into, you know, people who are not professional athletes and what can they do from a prevent injury prevention standpoint, we call it injury mitigation because we're trying to lower risk here. Yeah.

Joe Gambino (12:30)
No, or preparedness, know, preparedness

is the word that I usually use in the clinic with everyone. And again, that's just as the, the McCaffrey example you brought up is another perfect example of previous injury leading to another injury. So

Joe Gambino (12:44)
Mm.

Right. I remember like

the first thing you learned in school is like the number one risk factor for an injury is previous injury, right? So like, and I used to tell people that all the time. I mean, I still do. Um, but I think it's something that people really need to kind of keep in the back of their mind. If you had a ankle sprain once, the chance of it happening again goes out. you had a client who dislocated his patella, it happened more than once. Um, right. So just keep in mind, you know, if you do have one, chances are, you know, I mean, at least the risk of it happening again is there.

Joe Gambino (12:53)
Right.

Yeah. For, I think people listening, broad strokes. I think a lot of the things that we end up building as adults start and end really in childhood. So I think that, you know, our, or this has been shown, our tendons are going to be as healthy or built up as they are by the time we reach adolescence. And then those are sort of the tendons that we walk through with life. Right. ⁓

Probably to some degree, bone density is correlated to that just a little bit. This is why I think it's so important that we don't over specialize in any one thing too soon. Run around, play, jump, skip, hop, know, mix it up. There is nothing that I believe or have seen. And especially I think when you look at all these athletes, a lot of them

were really good high school, let's just say with basketball, were really good high school football players. They were really good track athletes. When you read the resumes of these guys, none of them were really like, oh, I only played basketball from the time I was five. That was just the sport I chose when I got older because that's the one I showed the most competence in, the one that I could excel at.

For people listening, especially if you have younger kids, try to push them to do different things. Don't have them focus on just one sport all year round. And that's something I see all the time in Long Island because you have your fall team for soccer and basketball. Then you have your spring team for soccer and basketball. Then you have your travel team for the summer. And it's just a lot of the same repetitive stress.

People who are now moving on, they're like, well, can't go backwards in time. I really messed that one up. Well, don't worry. I did too. So now what you have to sort of figure out is stick to the basics. And these are conversations I've had with more and more people in the training program here at Strength in Motion. You know, some people like to do...

As many reps as possible. Some people like to do every minute on the minute. Some people want to cross train. Some people want more rowing in their workout. And I'm like, look, that's great. You want to row? Row. You want to put together a little circuit? blend everything together. That's fine. But stick to the basics. Rinse, repeat. Fall in love with that process. Because so often,

The exercises we see people do on Instagram are under loaded. They're on unstable surfaces and you're kind of getting good at a few different qualities, but not great at any of them. And I think what really a lot of this stuff comes back to is people are just afraid to load themselves heavy. Cause I don't want to get hurt. Well, what do you think is going to hurt you when you go out in the field of life or sport load? So the more you can load yourself.

the better. So that's what I would sort of advise people. Mix it up, load heavy, but stick to the basics.

Joe Gambino (16:35)
Yeah, I like that. And I would say, you know, we're looking at programming over time, right? I sure. You know, I think a lot of people have different goals and someone might want to go run a marathon and hit a specific time. Some people may want to just be able to, you know, not have back pain when they're playing golf. Some people may want to be able to, to go out and compete at a powerlifting meet, right? So, hey, you always need to know your goals and understanding kind of what demand you want to place on it.

Two, think you should train in whatever way. think like when we're looking, if you look at, people tend to look at programming in a small, okay, this is my month, so I'm gonna program it like this. And they don't look at the whole big picture, right? So if you're training for, let's just use power lifting, you'd say, it can be anything. And you know your meet is on this day and you need 16 weeks to really prepare for it.

peak and then hit your meat and then move on from there. Now you know that around this meat, is going to be like your central training for performance for that. Right after it, you're probably going to want to do general preparation to make sure your body's feeling good after kind of putting your body through the ringer. I think having like a system, this goes back to the basics. It's a basics program. It has some mobility. It has some general strength. It has maybe some energy system work, but it's just the basics.

You're not trying to over do anything. You're just trying to like kind of like Undo some of the hard pushing that you've done give your body some recovery in a sense and then you can switch that up to whatever else that you needed if you if you have some goals maybe you go back into a strength block because you're trying to You know get the numbers up for the next week that's coming on just start to kind of build that base a little bit more or it's a hypertrophy block or it's a maybe you put on some weight because you were trying to be a little bit heavier for that meat that maybe it's a

you know, a weight loss block in a sense where you're trying, you know, so you just look at the kind of goals over the year and you can kind of break it down that way. And if someone's just very, very general, then pretty much the way that I look at it, if they're just like, I just don't want to have back pain when I'm playing golf. It's, Hey, you know, like, so we'll just do things here and there, but like we still have times where we're going to train you harder. And then we're going to have times where we step back. Sometimes we're focused more on mobility. Sometimes we focus more on hypertrophy. So it's just kind of, I think people just need to kind of take a step back and look at things from a bigger picture and not just here in the now.

And then just focus on the basics, do some strengthening, do some mobility, try to improve any imbalances that you have. And I think the stronger we can make you, the more mobile we can make you. It will help things in the future as far as reducing injury, especially recovery. think is a big one that a lot of people miss. It's not just massages and stuff like that, but are you sleeping or eating or are hydrated? Like those things can go a long way too. We talked about it last episode, right?

Someone was drinking right right before they went for a round that can contribute to back pain, right? Because they're not hydrated. They're drunk All that stuff, right? So at the end of the day, I think we're focusing on the basics and things like that It should help but again, you know, we're just trying to reduce your risk of injury. We're not making it never happen again I think that's a a lot of people need to know that because people do things Right, and then when something happens, it's a big mental hit for them

And then it takes time for them to kind of get over it and build that confidence. He was like, why, why me? No, I think there was a phone call with, with Tatum and they put on, it was on a sports center and Instagram where he had a conversation with his dad. Like, why was it me? You know, I'm like, you know, he's doing everything. He has good trainers. puts, you know, work into his body. Like why did it happen to him in that moment? ⁓ it's, it's mentally hard, you know, it's going to probably take some mental work for him to.

to get back and be ready for when he is ready to get back on the court. To be able to trust that ankle, to push it, to play. I mean, that's the same for you and me or anyone else who gets an injury. That nerve is getting back into activity.

Joe Gambino (20:26)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. mean, grief is part of the injury process. You you just lost something that's really important to you and you're going to be out for a significant period of time and that's your identity. So if you weren't grieving or didn't have that moment of anger, I'd probably be a little bit more concerned. I'd be like, you know, well, yeah, if Tatum popped up, you know, he's like waving to the fans, giving a thumbs up, you know, in the wheelchair, you know, you see him, he's like, you know, just waving at everybody at home. Like, you know, I'm going to be okay.

Joe Gambino (20:38)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Gambino (21:04)
I'm going to be like, well, I don't know, does this guy really love basketball? You know, should I have bought his Jersey? Should I have bought his shoes? Um, so I do think that that is part of the process and I don't know how old Tatum is. Tatum is pretty young, right? He's like, he's, he's younger than 30 for sure. think, right.

Joe Gambino (21:20)
I don't know. You keep talking and I'll let you know.

Joe Gambino (21:24)
Yeah.

But you know, age is another one that comes 27. Yeah. So, I mean, from a standpoint of, you know, being in the peak of his career, you know, previous injury, you know, I don't know a lot about Tatum's previous cycles or really a lot of athletes previous cycles, if he had any Achilles or ankles injuries before. Now, know, if Brunson tours Achilles, you and I might be like, well, yeah, I mean, the guy's roll on his ankle. Yeah. Every, every three minutes, you know, I mean, so

Joe Gambino (21:26)
27.

It was about to happen.

Joe Gambino (21:52)
It kind of makes sense, but for Tatum, you're like, well, you know, I don't know. Did he have any other issues that, you know, and we wouldn't even know, you know, he could have been dealing with some Achilles issues throughout the season and, know, he's taping it up or just like a lot of tendons do, they feel better after you keep loading them. So who knows? Maybe he was taking some medication for his wrist, you know, who knows? Right. So I think that the big takeaway for a lot of this stuff is.

Prepare yourself as best as you can, know, stick to the basics, but then realize that there's always going to be a risk. And the people selling you injury prevention programs and all these other different things, even if they have data that says, Hey, I'm going to reduce your injury risk by 50%. Well, look at what we talked about with Achilles injuries. They happen two to five per year. So even the best program is going to reduce injury risk to one to three.

Joe Gambino (22:24)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Gambino (22:51)
I don't know. Is that, is that a valuable program to sort of be implementing and buying and, you know, going across everywhere? Well, yeah, I guess if your guy didn't get injured, but how would we ever know that he did or wouldn't or she wouldn't. So it's interesting.

Joe Gambino (22:54)
Hmm.

But I'm

gonna bring you back to your point. I actually pulled up here, it's his injury history. back, first one that's on here is 2017 ankle injury. That led, he looked like he was pretty good in 2018, 2019. He has shin injury, he has knee injury, groin injury. 2020, the ankle comes back up, 21 ankle. That lingered around, 22 ankle injury.

Bunch of knee stuff popping up in here. 23, he had a couple of heel injuries, also an ankle injury. And then that lead to 24 where he started with an ankle injury knee. And that kind of led all the ways to this season where he did have an ankle injury earlier in the season. And then here we are today with the Achilles tendon injury.

Joe Gambino (23:59)
Okay, right. So again, like, amazing, right? Like, I didn't even know any of that. But now all of a sudden, if you're like, if you're if you're betting, right, if you're looking at injury risk profiles for Tatum, you're not going to be like, you know what, I think his back's gonna go out this season, like Ben Simmons, his back goes out, right? No, you're looking at his list. And you're like, well, no, geez, ankle, ankle, ankle, heel, shin, ankle, ankle, heel, shin. And you're like, I really hope that you know, nothing happens to him. Lower body ACL.

Achilles but then it did. So, you know, I think again, it's interesting the other little conversation, you know, again, that that people ⁓ I was thinking about this week and I wanted to ask you this and maybe even ask this to listeners, the shoes that he was wearing, right? I saw some videos of like them cutting it open and you know, he has that fiber carbon plate in it and you know, that fiber carbon plates, you know, designed to help explosiveness, you know, maybe by 2%, whatever that means. And it does put a little bit more

stress on the tendon. So even if there was a correlation to these shoes or these super shoes, I'm thinking that there might be a dip, right, where you and I are going to wear super shoes with our shitty tendons. So yeah, maybe we're not the best people to be wearing super shoes. However, if we put Avery and Olivia in some super shoes and had them run around and jump and everything at a younger age, would that extra

strain and stress on their tendon actually help them reduce injuries later on. So are we just like using the technology in the wrong direction where for you and me, it's like, Hey, you know what? Just, use your regular converse. Like you're old. All right. Like you didn't, you didn't do this when you were younger and then maybe put some of this newer stuff into the adolescent group and then say, Hey, look, if we can get these tendons as stiff as possible earlier on, these shoes are going to help that.

And then would that reduce that chance of it happening later on? So that's what I was been kicking around this week.

Joe Gambino (26:02)
Yeah, it's definitely an interesting conversation because it's the same thing that we saw with the whole barefoot craze. know, it's like someone who's barefoot their whole life never wore, you know, cushioned shoes. You know, if they were to wear a Vivo or get into this barefoot style shoe, they're probably going to be able to transition really well. You take someone with foot issues like I never really had foot issues, but the first time I wore a Vivo, my feet were sore as hell.

You know, was like such a different stress, right? And it took me some time. They even tell you when you buy them, right? You need to acclimate to these shoes, right? Like you can't just go in and walk around on the concrete for hours and hours for weeks on end in these shoes and expect not to have to feel sore, to have some discomfort or anything like that, right? So, I think that kind of insinuates at your point, you know, I don't know if, you know, we want to be messing around with adolescents and say, hey, you know, try these carbon fiber, you know, let's put these insoles in your shoes and see if it, you know, if it

increases tendon load down the line. But, you know, I think the more that we allow people to be barefoot and walk around and use their feet naturally and get out of these shoes. I mean, that in itself could potentially make impacts down the line. But again, we also live in a culture where someone's been wearing restrictive, know, basketball players have their ankles taped probably almost their whole life at this point, you know, from when they're, you know, if they play high school ball, college ball.

And then at the professional level, ankles are constantly taped, they're wearing specific basketball shoes. Does that also have an impact on some of these injuries that happened down the line as well? I mean, we can make correlation here, but I don't know if we'll ever have the answer to all of that.

Joe Gambino (27:39)
Yeah. And we don't even have to do anything to the adela, we don't have to put anything in their shoes because all these shoes have these things already. You know, like, you know, for, for you and I growing up, you know, we were getting a pair of Jordans, but they were just, you know, as far as I knew, regular rubber, regular material, you know, if you date back to our parents generations, what Dr. J was in just in some converse. mean, those basically were probably equivalent to barefoot shoes that we have today. Right. So that's where it's interesting where like this technology is, is, is

Joe Gambino (27:44)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Joe Gambino (28:07)
running so fast so far. is it just, you know, again, like this, this middle age characters who are trying to retrofit themselves into this new technology. And, you know, we just never prepared our bodies for it. And then maybe that's where this little correlation of higher injury risk or the seeming correlation of higher injury risk, maybe is coming into play for some people. you know, I thought it was interesting. Maybe we can have one of a foot

sneaker person, maybe we could bring court or Jen or somebody back on, talk to us a little bit more about sneakers and footwear choices and things like that for viewers and clients. So yeah, I think it'll be an interesting question or conversation to think about, you know, when to apply these things, would they matter earlier on versus kind of later on in life? things to kick around.

Joe Gambino (28:57)
Yeah, basically, it's actually interesting. just I would actually love to see a further further date back. But apparently the injury rate this season is double last season. So that is an interesting change. And I wonder what would make that big of a change in one year. So. Again, I mean, when we're looking at these things, I think, you know, I haven't looked at the trends enough to say, like, you know, what happens in the 19.

80s versus now. mean, the game is different. You know, I don't know if you can even make a correlation between how people players played then versus now because people are faster, bigger, stronger than they were many decades ago. ⁓ But I think if we looked over maybe like last five to 10 years and we're constantly seeing an increase, you know, maybe maybe that's case. But again, training has changed significantly. Again, I mean, you look at players from Lebron was probably like the

Like one of the people that came on, you know, when he came, his strong athletic, right? Like more and more players are coming up now that's like Zion, you know, like that didn't exist, you know, 15 years ago in the NBA. I feel like there was a major shift in almost all sports with size, you know, what was that book? Was it Homo Sapien that we read?

Joe Gambino (30:20)
say, the sapiens.

Joe Gambino (30:21)
I can't remember the name. Sapiens. Yeah. When they talk

about, you know, like body types and like their specific body types for sports and how they've changed over time. So it's, you know, it's clearly been, ⁓ you know, you're almost like cherry picking, right? Like people now that fit a certain bill that are going to, you know, work better in this sport versus another sport based on their wingspan, their size, their height, you know, things like that. So definitely interesting. ⁓ and again, you know,

Joe Gambino (30:36)
Of

Joe Gambino (30:51)
We can make correlations here, but there's a lot of things that have changed year over year. I think it's going be really hard to pinpoint one thing versus the other. So it just goes back to basics, Joe. Just go back to basics, do what you can, and hopefully you're one of the lucky ones that can get through seasons with minimal injury.

Joe Gambino (31:01)
That's it.

Look, and there's a good chance you probably are, you know, just weigh the risks, you probably are going to be okay. But if it's not, or you're not, then there are ways that we can probably try to help you. But even even if again, what we're playing with small numbers, this is where it gets, you know, it gets headline grabby because you and I can research Okay, well, what was this? What was the injury risk last year? Okay, well, double this year. This year, there was five documented cases. Last year, that means that there were probably two

or three documented cases, right? So double it, it's still sort of in that estimated incidence of two to five per year. So yeah, we can cherry pick small numbers. And I think this is what, you know, our, our profession sort of likes to do and then run with it and be like, well, why are injury rates increasing? It's like, well, it kind of stays around this number. Now, if next year it goes from five to 10, and then the year after that, it goes from 10 to 20. Well, then yeah, that's a, that's a big correlation, right?

Because, you know, over here, yeah, it has risen a bit. Um, but it's still over the last 20 years or so, the average is 1.7 per year. So yeah, maybe it went up from 1.2 or 1.3 or 1.4. And again, I think it's more polarizing the more popular the player is. So you have Klay Thompson recently, right? You have Kevin Durant recently that sticks out in my mind. And you watch that replay over and over and over again. But if it was, if it was a second string guy, you know,

You don't know them. You know, maybe we're not even talking about this as much. It's just like, cause you can always say the second shrink. I didn't work as hard. He wasn't as strong. He wasn't as fast. He wasn't as this. And then I saw some posts this week that was like, well, you know, the reason why these happen is because human beings are just exceeding, you know, the capability of their tissues where we're at such a high level of human performance. And I was like, that's the dumbest shit I've ever heard. Because then all we have to do is watch baseball players.

Your UCL, that ligament on the inside of your elbow should technically explode every single time you throw a baseball. Now granted, like UCL injuries happen, but they're not super common, right? So if we're exceeding the capability of our tissues and our tissues were never meant to do this, well, then we shouldn't have been able to throw a spear or a javelin, you know, bringing up sapiens a while ago because we would have been like, oh, our ligaments can't handle that, but they can because force is nonlinear.

So that's also an interesting conversation maybe we can come back around to, but I think we've said a lot today.

Joe Gambino (33:42)
Yeah, the last thing I'll say here is that this season is not the highest percentage of injuries across all seasons in the NBA. 2020 was. Yeah.

Joe Gambino (33:53)
interesting. So COVID, the lockdown, change in schedule,

maybe some of these guys were recovering from illness. So cool. Like really interesting things to talk about.

Joe Gambino (34:02)
Injury

and illness is part of that number. So it's not just injury, but correct. So, all right, well there we are. That's it, the power of Google. Power of Google. All right, man, well, I don't have anything else to kind of add in here, so you can take us home if you have nothing else.

Joe Gambino (34:09)
Yeah. Fun facts, Mr. Gambino.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, this is a great conversation. Thank you, Joe. I love you. Listeners, we love you. And don't forget to come back next week for another exciting episode of the Beyond Pain.