Why Some Athletes Are Injury Prone

What is it about some athletes that keeps them on the sidelines for a disproportionate number of games? Are they wimps, whiners, clumsy, or just unlucky? Writing in the New York Times, Gina Kolata asks that question, and comes up with several possible answers. In short, injuries are generally the result of pushing too hard. It could be a strength issue, Kolata tells us, or it could be an endurance issue. It could also be an alignment issue. Carl Foster, director of the human performance laboratory at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, tells Kolata that he believes there is a "general quality of robustness" that may influence those who don’t get hurt. “I’ve never seen any systematically collected data," says Foster. "And I’m not even
sure what one would measure, but anyone who has worked with athletes
for any time at all has seen that there are just some people who are
fragile and some who aren’t.”
Read more in the New York Times.