Chronic Joint/Tendon Damage
Hello All
Has anyone read any medical articles on chronic joint/tendon damage resulting from Aikido? For example, has there been a study(s) on 10 year olds that started aikido, practiced 4X/week and how their joints and health are at 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 years of age? What about studies of 60 year old aikidokas (who have actively trained for 40 years) joint health? URLs are appreciated. |
Re: Chronic Joint/Tendon Damage
Hi Kent,
I haven't heard of studies of chronic joint/tendon damage from aikido, but Greg Olson in Bozeman, Montana has been part of publishing a bunch of articles on anatomical analyses of aikido techniques. They may be an interesting place to start: http://www.bozemanaikido.com/olsonsensei.html -- Jun |
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Jun
The reason I was asking is that my daughter has been doing Aikido for 2.5+ years now and does great ukemi/breakfalls. Everyone in class loves to throw her, and she loves to fly. Honestly she does ukemi that I won't do. One evening after watching her get thrown for the ump-teenth time I was wondering if she might be doing some damage to her joints that wouldn't show up for years. I heard at the Summit last year that Ikeda Shihan has knee problems/replacement. If he does, what does he think caused it? |
Re: Chronic Joint/Tendon Damage
Just FWIW: in terms of *acute* knee injury, there was no correlation in my survey of 101 dojos between frequency of flying breakfalls and acute knee injury.
If you anecdotally chat with now older folks who trained hard they will say they should have done less high-impact falling in their earlier years in terms of overall joint health. It is more common to hear them ascribe knee problems to overuse of suwariwaza - which any orthopedist will tell you is high risk for both acute injury and for slow wear and tear. In terms of acute stuff, especially for women in ANY sport the highest risk is in "cutting" moves that torque the knee, and jumping (women tend to jump with quads unless trained to engage hamstrings) so learning impeccable dynamic posture and cross training im plyometrics is good for reducing injury risk. |
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In Scandinavia, there have been several studies on how proper warm-up and strength training can reduce knee injuries for female teenage athletes (especially soccer players).
A smaller norwegian study: http://www.klokeavskade.no/en/News-a...y-risk-by-50-/ A larger swedish study (cant find a english version so you have to use google translate): http://sverigesradio.se/sida/gruppsi...rtikel=4305758 |
Re: Chronic Joint/Tendon Damage
Possibly, although if you are doing a sane activity (as opposed to, say, pro football or boxing) injuries are generally a signal that you're not doing it right. E.g. shoulder injuries from downward dog caused by using the shoulders incorrectly and taking the weight there rather than passing it through; moving in such a way as to create a shearing force across the knee instead of using it as a hinge as God intended; or trying to do internal exercises with a bunch of tension instead of using them to root out and release tension.
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And injuries can also arise due to patterns of incorrect movement. But this is because correct movement is hard. Your body tries to tell you that you are doing something wrong, but it is not always clear how to fix it. Not every teacher is a physical therapist or osteopath, and every body is unique. In fact, I would go so far as to say that this type of injury - an incremental thing caused by inappropriate body mechanics - is something that every person practicing Aikido will experience to some degree. So I wouldn't worry about the breakfalls just because some folks blame bad backs on them. I also wouldn't worry about suwariwaza because some folks blame shot knees on it. I'd worry about whether or not the student takes the time to warm up, stretch, and listen to their body tell them whether they are doing something right or wrong. |
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BTW, as with the women and ACL injury research - I cannot cite specific papers because if I kept either the papers or the url links from 33 years of nursing and 17 years of aikido there would be no time or space to have a life. The info is out there for those who google. |
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Don't drink a lot of beer AND take a lot of advil after. Look both ways, don't talk with your mouth full, etc. |
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my chiropractor told me to drink a large glass of water before going to bed, and a large glass of water first thing when wake up in the morning. and drink water through out the day. folks often are not hydrated themselves enough. dry twigs are easily break; green branch, much harder.
and what Janet said. Tohei stuffs are good warm up. same goes for some of the taichi stuffs too. hot-cold, bengay, and various related stuffs also help, especially if you accidentally rubbed them in some very sensitive areas. you would warm up, alright. :) |
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What I wonder about is not so much breakfalls, but movements like tenkan. Depending how precisely you move, it's very easy to do them in such a way that there's a kind of sideways twisting on your knee, e.g., feet facing the wrong way while there's weight on your knee as you rotate your body. From the little I know of knees, that sounds like the kind of thing where your joint is being used in a way it really isn't designed to work, and we do a LOT of tenkans in Aikido. Seems like the kind of thing where if it's done in a way that uses poor biomechanics, it could add up pretty badly over the years.
I have also read and been shown by various dojomates some interesting things with plyometrics, toe raises, balance exercises, and other such exercises in injury prevention, and have tried in the past couple of years to incorporate some of these into my own training. Anecdotally I do feel more stable on my feet. |
Re: Chronic Joint/Tendon Damage
I haven't bothered to look into joints and genetics before posting this, but I think it is instructive to note that in general medical science is moving toward identifying more and more genetic contributions to disease. I suspect joint degeneration and the likelihood of sustaining an acute joint injury from a particular motion (rather than just putting stress on the joint) are two areas where there might be a lot of genetics involved.
It is worth searching GoogleScholar or PubMed to look for studies on genetics and joint injury. If you find any genetic identifiers in the literature, you can get analyzed at a company like 23andMe, download their raw data file, and find out if you run a higher risk of injury. You'll have to figure out the details of that from someone else, though. |
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...if I understand correctly, the literature also does not suggest that stretching after training is beneficial because you are stretching after training per se. Stretching should be done after training because (1) it avoids the problems of stretching before training and (2) training is a nice way of warming up in preparation for stretching. Stretching every day is not beneficial and may be counterproductive. Stretching 2-3 times per week is a better goal. If you are mashed for time, you could not stretch after aikido but stretch after the next day's CrossFit or whatever and be fine. Don't drink a lot of beer AND take a lot of Advil after. This could be interpreted two ways, one of which would be to not take beer with a lot of Advil. That is actually good advice! You should always avoid mixing alcohol and NSAID medications (Advil, aspirin, Naproxin) in your stomach. However, the advice to take a lot of Advil is questionable. Once in a while Advil is very helpful but chronic use of Advil is not so good. Remember that "anti-inflammatory" is Advil's classification in a pharmacopeia, not a description of its chemical effects in the body. Advil interferes with a lot of chemical processes that you might not want it to. Chronic use of Advil has been linked with, for example, erectile dysfunction. (Bet you won't forget that one next time you see a bottle of Advil!) In general, alcohol is bad for recovery, but I must say that, trying to cut back on drinking while training here in Kyoto, I actually feel more pain. Alcohol is a very effective pain killer. |
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