The Myth of Injury Prevention

I'm a day late on sending this out, and I'm actually glad I fell behind

on this.

It's one of those "meant to be" moments, let me explain.

Last week in my shed I filmed a couple of "Dave Cave" videos where I

talked about a topic while sharpening my kitchen knives.

I posted the first, it was only 5 minutes long, talking about the

training principle of "Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand"

The second ran onto 10 minutes, and I was talking about whether or not

"Injury Prevention" is possible.

I should just post it eh.

Does Meta & Tik Tok allow that length video?

The Myth of Injury Prediction

Anyhow, over the weekend, there was a UFC event.

The main event was Conor McGregor coming back from a 5 year absence to

fight Max Holloway.

The fight was over in a little over a minute.

The fight was stopped after McGregor injured his knee and Holloway, a

gentleman and a sportsman was waving at the ref and trying to stop the

bout for about half the length of bout.

Now, it's unfortunate, no one wants to see a person get hurt.

No one wants for a big competition to be over early due to injury when

we have two professional athletes who'd spent months preparing and we

the audience are looking forward to real test of skill and grit.

But, in sport, and often in life, chaos is a factor.

We cannot predict every outcome no matter what we think, and Murphys Law

will always be waiting for an opportunity to prove itself.

But, over in the land of SocMed, holy shit!

Over in the land of SocMed we have post after post after post from

people talking about how they could "see" that McGregor was hurt or was

on the cusp of injury, from simply looking at a few video clips, a

handful of pictures and a fight that lasted slightly over a minute.

And more than one of those posts laid claim that if McGregor was under

their care, it would never have happened!

It is quite simply pathetic and raise my blood pressure beyond belief!

Snake Oil and Hindsight Bias

Part of why I get annoyed is that you are a customer, a

consumer.

You are a fan of fitness, training and all things human performance.

But you're not a professional, not in this field.

And there's people you follow, you look to for information and

inspiration telling blatant lies and spinning stories to suit their

biases in hope that you'd buy their shit.

It boils my blood.

I am a professional in this field. And I have my opinions, of course I do.

I can run what I know of McGregor through my Anatomy in Motion model and

come up with a theory as to why his knee may have been vulnerable, but

I'll tell you that it's only a story, a working theory subject to change

as more evidence becomes available.

What I cannot do is say with certainty that this video or that photo

shows X, Y or Z

Yeah, with hindsight, we can see the injury happen, we may be able to

then analyse existing footage with that injury mind and we may see, or

rather, convince ourselves that we see evidence.

And that is the best we could hope for.

But then to take our guesses and post about as if it's a certainty, well

that's just wrong.

Is it false advertising?

Should it fall under some regulatory eye?

I don't know.

Stay Cynical

However, what I hope to have achieved here is to aid you in staying

cynical, to remain questioning and not fall foul of the snake oil

salesmen of SocMed

Now, if you have something you'd like to say, to comment or to ask about

this or any other topic in the field of fitness/performance, hit that

reply button and send it in.

I'm looking forward to reading your replies

Chat soon

Dave Hedges

www.DaveHedges.net