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I think the Olympics is just generally physically bad for the athletes. Runners, weightlifters, wrestlers, boxers, rowers, etc all these folks end up working so

I think the Olympics is just generally physically bad for the athletes. Runners, weightlifters, wrestlers, boxers, rowers, etc all these folks end up working so close o the edge of sustainable human tolerance and capacity that’s it’s unlikely they are not constantly going over it.

secondcoming 6y ago
Isn't that the whole point of the Olympics though? To push humans to the limit.
- Balgair 6y ago
  Nit: To have humans push themselves to the limit.
Invictus0 6y ago
I don't understand this comment; what is physically bad about running? I'll accept that you may have a higher rate of injuries but surely we can agree that pulling a muscle and giving yourself Parkinson's are not remotely in the same ballpark of injuries.
- VLM 6y ago
  Knee implants, significant negative hormonal changes for men over 50 miles/wk. Repetitive stress injuries are no joke. OP is probably not aware that the Olympics does not have ultra-marathon type events which are generally very unhealthy for participants, only a 10K and a marathon (and shorter sprints of course)
  - Invictus0 6y ago
    WRT knee damage, I found a Harvard report saying that running helps protect your knees against arthritis [0]. You'll have to source your own hormonal claim because it was too vague for me to find much, but what I did find did not seem negative [1][2]. [0] https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/will-continuing-to-run-make-my-knees-wear-out-faster https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/will-continuing-to... [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19046725/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19046725/ [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18208421/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18208421/
    - ryanwaggoner 6y ago
      You're talking about regular running, not trying to literally be the best runner in the world. Completely different.
    - skizm 6y ago
      That first link is just a Q/A. There is no study or report linked. Almost all studies use untrained vs trained athletes. They rarely qualified what "trained" means and could be anything from a lifetime athlete to someone who self-reported following a 6 week plan prior to the study and now we consider this person "trained". Most athletic studies are used to compare a sedentary person to someone who workouts casually (less than about 10 hours per week). Once you pass this point, you're in diminishing returns territory and you've got to actively sacrifice some parts of your overall health to make gains in a single activity (sprinting, jumping, etc.). So will running a few times a week help fight mild arthritis? Probably. Will training like an Olympic athlete? No. Same thing applies to the OP article. Will sledding down a hill give you brain damage? No. Will constantly sledding at Olympic athlete speeds and g-forces? Seems like it.
      - erfgh 6y ago
        How do you know all that? There is no scientific consensus that exercising over 10 ours per week sacrifices your overall health.
      - def_true_false 6y ago
        Yeah, you definitely have to sacrifice parts of your overall health if you want to exercise more than 90 minutes per day. /s Diminishing returns doesn't mean that you have to sacrifice anything (besides some idealized notion of efficiency). The hurt-your-overall-health point is somewhere much closer to Olympic athlete than it is to 10hrs/week. If you just vary the activities a little, you will have no trouble with spending a lot more time on exercise. People who literally do only the one physical activity they compete in are straw men. PS: The number of people completely clueless about fitness on HN would be hilarious if it weren't so sad.
        6y ago
  - bo1024 6y ago
    > Knee implants Source? I would expect these are much more common in obese people than in habitual runners. My understanding is that runners have been found to have healthy knees, e.g. with a bit of googling I find [1][2] (but haven't read them). > significant negative hormonal changes for men over 50 miles/wk They have found somewhat lower testosterone levels, but I don't know of any study finding negative health impacts. Do you have a source for "significant negative"? [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5179322/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5179322/ [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2556152/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2556152/
GhostVII 6y ago
With things like running, rowing, and weightlifting you aren't at a significant risk of brain injury though. I would much rather have damaged joints than a damaged brain. And for these sledding athletes, it sounds like this damage is constant and inevitable even if you do everything perfectly, rather than a result of accidents like with sports like snowboarding and skiing.
- qppo 6y ago
  Injury risk can be counterintuitive, like how synchronized swimmers pretty much universally suffer from concussions [0] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetorch/2016/08/16/490074935/the-dangerous-side-of-synchronized-swimming-concussions https://www.npr.org/sections/thetorch/2016/08/16/490074935/t...
- burger_moon 6y ago
  Weight cutting is pretty bad for your body, and they take it to extreme levels of drying out their bodies too, so any of these sports which have weight classes (all the weight lifting, wrestling) are pretty damaging to all organs in the body and have caused death before. Not advocating to stop these in Olympics, pointing out there's non-obvious risks athletes take beside head trauma.
partyboat1586 6y ago
Not to the degree that there is a pattern of them committing suicide before 50. This sport seems particularly pernicious because it's a slow accumulated brain injury and because the sport normalises concussion which is taken very seriously in other sports.
NoOneNew 6y ago
I find it extremely weird when people complain that athletes should stop their sport because "it's bad for them". So is office work. 8 hours of sitting, back pain and the repetitive stress on hands causing arthritis issues isn't that much better. I'd say it's just as physically bad for people, except office work is a life unfulfilled and boring. Office work isn't exactly something you can brag about. I'd rather have bad knees being a competitive runner than having bad knees because I sit too much. There's inherent risk in simply living. If people want to have fulfilled lives by pushing their body's to the limit, that's their choice and to be honest, a choice we should all be encouraged to try in our lives to some capacity. Also, to pretend they're unaware of the risk is ridiculous. It's not like the Olympics is the only competitive arena for these disciplines.
- fermienrico 6y ago
  Agreed, we should not sympathize on behalf of them where they're free to choose to do something else if they wanted. This is a concious choice and it is in the same vein as people would support legalization of recreational drugs - let people make their own decisions. Wanna rock climb and take the risk? We should allow it just like we allow sky diving, climbing the Everest and sailing. This kind of thinking leads to degradation of the society where no one will be allowed to take risks.
  - HappyDreamer 6y ago
    > Wanna rock climb and take the risk? We should allow it That's different from broadcasting a free soloing climbing tournament across the world, and giving rewards to the winners (survivors) "Allowing" need not meen "encouraging"
    - fermienrico 6y ago
      Fair enough, that's an important distinction and I concede. I think it makes sense to prevent glorifying deadly sports and still allow them to be conducted.
    - NoOneNew 6y ago

secondcoming 6y ago

Isn't that the whole point of the Olympics though? To push humans to the limit.

Balgair 6y ago
Nit: To have humans push themselves to the limit.

Invictus0 6y ago

I don't understand this comment; what is physically bad about running? I'll accept that you may have a higher rate of injuries but surely we can agree that pulling a muscle and giving yourself Parkinson's are not remotely in the same ballpark of injuries.

VLM 6y ago
Knee implants, significant negative hormonal changes for men over 50 miles/wk. Repetitive stress injuries are no joke. OP is probably not aware that the Olympics does not have ultra-marathon type events which are generally very unhealthy for participants, only a 10K and a marathon (and shorter sprints of course)
- Invictus0 6y ago
  WRT knee damage, I found a Harvard report saying that running helps protect your knees against arthritis [0]. You'll have to source your own hormonal claim because it was too vague for me to find much, but what I did find did not seem negative [1][2]. [0] https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/will-continuing-to-run-make-my-knees-wear-out-faster https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/will-continuing-to... [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19046725/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19046725/ [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18208421/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18208421/
  - ryanwaggoner 6y ago
    You're talking about regular running, not trying to literally be the best runner in the world. Completely different.
  - skizm 6y ago
    That first link is just a Q/A. There is no study or report linked. Almost all studies use untrained vs trained athletes. They rarely qualified what "trained" means and could be anything from a lifetime athlete to someone who self-reported following a 6 week plan prior to the study and now we consider this person "trained". Most athletic studies are used to compare a sedentary person to someone who workouts casually (less than about 10 hours per week). Once you pass this point, you're in diminishing returns territory and you've got to actively sacrifice some parts of your overall health to make gains in a single activity (sprinting, jumping, etc.). So will running a few times a week help fight mild arthritis? Probably. Will training like an Olympic athlete? No. Same thing applies to the OP article. Will sledding down a hill give you brain damage? No. Will constantly sledding at Olympic athlete speeds and g-forces? Seems like it.
    - erfgh 6y ago
      How do you know all that? There is no scientific consensus that exercising over 10 ours per week sacrifices your overall health.
    - def_true_false 6y ago
      Yeah, you definitely have to sacrifice parts of your overall health if you want to exercise more than 90 minutes per day. /s Diminishing returns doesn't mean that you have to sacrifice anything (besides some idealized notion of efficiency). The hurt-your-overall-health point is somewhere much closer to Olympic athlete than it is to 10hrs/week. If you just vary the activities a little, you will have no trouble with spending a lot more time on exercise. People who literally do only the one physical activity they compete in are straw men. PS: The number of people completely clueless about fitness on HN would be hilarious if it weren't so sad.
      - 6y ago
- bo1024 6y ago
  > Knee implants Source? I would expect these are much more common in obese people than in habitual runners. My understanding is that runners have been found to have healthy knees, e.g. with a bit of googling I find [1][2] (but haven't read them). > significant negative hormonal changes for men over 50 miles/wk They have found somewhat lower testosterone levels, but I don't know of any study finding negative health impacts. Do you have a source for "significant negative"? [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5179322/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5179322/ [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2556152/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2556152/

GhostVII 6y ago

With things like running, rowing, and weightlifting you aren't at a significant risk of brain injury though. I would much rather have damaged joints than a damaged brain. And for these sledding athletes, it sounds like this damage is constant and inevitable even if you do everything perfectly, rather than a result of accidents like with sports like snowboarding and skiing.

qppo 6y ago
Injury risk can be counterintuitive, like how synchronized swimmers pretty much universally suffer from concussions [0] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetorch/2016/08/16/490074935/the-dangerous-side-of-synchronized-swimming-concussions https://www.npr.org/sections/thetorch/2016/08/16/490074935/t...
burger_moon 6y ago
Weight cutting is pretty bad for your body, and they take it to extreme levels of drying out their bodies too, so any of these sports which have weight classes (all the weight lifting, wrestling) are pretty damaging to all organs in the body and have caused death before. Not advocating to stop these in Olympics, pointing out there's non-obvious risks athletes take beside head trauma.

partyboat1586 6y ago

Not to the degree that there is a pattern of them committing suicide before 50. This sport seems particularly pernicious because it's a slow accumulated brain injury and because the sport normalises concussion which is taken very seriously in other sports.

NoOneNew 6y ago

I find it extremely weird when people complain that athletes should stop their sport because "it's bad for them". So is office work. 8 hours of sitting, back pain and the repetitive stress on hands causing arthritis issues isn't that much better. I'd say it's just as physically bad for people, except office work is a life unfulfilled and boring. Office work isn't exactly something you can brag about. I'd rather have bad knees being a competitive runner than having bad knees because I sit too much. There's inherent risk in simply living. If people want to have fulfilled lives by pushing their body's to the limit, that's their choice and to be honest, a choice we should all be encouraged to try in our lives to some capacity. Also, to pretend they're unaware of the risk is ridiculous. It's not like the Olympics is the only competitive arena for these disciplines.

fermienrico 6y ago
Agreed, we should not sympathize on behalf of them where they're free to choose to do something else if they wanted. This is a concious choice and it is in the same vein as people would support legalization of recreational drugs - let people make their own decisions. Wanna rock climb and take the risk? We should allow it just like we allow sky diving, climbing the Everest and sailing. This kind of thinking leads to degradation of the society where no one will be allowed to take risks.
- HappyDreamer 6y ago
  > Wanna rock climb and take the risk? We should allow it That's different from broadcasting a free soloing climbing tournament across the world, and giving rewards to the winners (survivors) "Allowing" need not meen "encouraging"
  - fermienrico 6y ago
    Fair enough, that's an important distinction and I concede. I think it makes sense to prevent glorifying deadly sports and still allow them to be conducted.
  - NoOneNew 6y ago