29 Dec 2025 10:25:16
I will be meeting an old mate over the next few days who has a rehab clinic in Harley St.
About this time last year he and his team were tasked by various sporting bodies to look a muscle injuries in men’s and women’s sport.
This was to cover types of injury along with times of year, playing time and a few other things I can’t remember all part of the study. It was supposed to be a two year study but I hope to find out if they have found out anything already.
I personally find the subject interesting.
29 Dec 2025 22:37:56
Im no scientist but got to be the lack of rest between games.
30 Dec 2025 06:26:29
I’m not a scientist either but my guess is the report will suggest several things. I also think the gap between games will be a long way down on any list of issues.
I personally think pre season fitness will be top of any such list.
{Ed001's Note - basic fitness is the biggest issue in my opinion. They barely do any just running any more to improve their stamina. In the past, when players barely got injured, their stamina was much higher as coaches ran them into the ground during pre-season.}
30 Dec 2025 07:52:14
Ed, the last time I spoke to the guy he raised the very issues you mention. He had been surprised how different sports approach training and how even within the same sport how different clubs/coaches approach pre-season training. His exact phrase was that some coaches see fitness has “happening on the job. ”
Anyway, he and his practice are being sponsored by various governing bodies, so I guess they will drag any conclusions out for yonks!
{Ed001's Note - at Liverpool, during the Klopp era, the fitness and conditioning coaches used to be at constant loggerheads with Klopp. He wanted the training harder, so the games were easier and the coaches did that under protest. Now he has gone, the fitness and conditioning coaches are controlling the training and the players are unfit and dropping like flies to muscle injuries. Under Klopp, the injuries were mostly impact injuries, which you can do little about. It is the soft tissue injuries you can avoid, through fitness and flexibility. Liverpool had virtually no problems with them, but now they are rife. Fitness and conditioning coaches are clueless, in large part because most of the studies they learn from in university are based on flawed research, which is deliberately set up to reach a conclusion to suit whoever pays for it. That is why we had a raft of studies finding low fat diets were better, which coincided with companies just happening to be starting to sell ranges of 'low fat' foods being sold at a premium.
I was doing a college course on sports science through Liverpool FC and left it as they only wanted conclusions based on the research they had decided was correct. I spent a long time searching for actual independent studies, only found one, which was conducted in South Africa during the apartheid era on endurance athletes. That concluded that a low fat diet was actually a massive disadvantage, fat was required for stamina and endurance. The normal diet produced much better results, lessened injuries etc, the low fat diet saw results slump and injuries increase. But the college refused to accept the study's results. I gave up at that point, as it shouldn't be about giving them the answers they want to read.}
30 Dec 2025 08:28:33
Ed, that is a very interesting observation. I assume that diet will also form part of there research but I will ask when I see him.
{Ed001's Note - it is something that bugs me, as I spend a lot of time reading studies to keep up with the latest findings, so many are based around what the sponsor wants to hear. That is why the one your friend is working on should be more relevant, as I doubt the sponsor has any results it wants to be pushed on people. I would think they genuinely want to know the answer.}
30 Dec 2025 08:50:38
I always find the argument that players need a rest laughable. The previous generations of working people who struggled to put food on the table for their families would be turning in their graves.
When some players get a rest they go out on the pi**. I am not alluding to any current Chelsea players. In the 1971 Cup Winners Final replay I doubt that any of the Chelsea team wanted a rest.
30 Dec 2025 10:15:27
Ed, I think the study was meant to over a two year period. I can’t believe they will reach any conclusions in such a short period of time unless they are using historical stats as some sort of base line.