Ninja Warrior Injury Prevention: Introduction
Hello, and welcome to, what will most likely be, a long continuous series of articles about injury prevention and recovery in Obstacle Sports (mostly Ninja Warrior).
In this first section I will mostly introduce the topics and explain a little bit about the format of the sections to come; but first, a short introduction to Ninja Warrior and why I believe this information will be important to learn.
Ninja Warrior is a high-intensity obstacle course sport that combines elements of many other athletic disciplines. It originates from a Japanese TV game show called Sasuke, and has been seeing a steady growth in the west following NBC’s American Ninja Warrior. Obviously there is much more nuance to the story there, but this isn’t an article about the history of Ninja Warrior as a sport. That being said, there are a couple moments that can be picked out from the history that I will grab for use in this series about injury and prevention.
On to the meat of this info sandwich.
Why am I doing this?
Well, there are a few reasons. To start off with, because Ninja is still in its early stages of growth into becoming a recognized sport, there isn’t much in the way of scientific literature covering these topics, specifically regarding Ninja Warrior. There are, however, many articles on sports that share similarities to Ninja Warrior, such as Gymnastics, Rock Climbing, and Parkour. As well, there is a massive collection of information about injury prevention and recovery in general athletics. I believe that it is of the utmost importance to provide as much information to athletes and coaches as possible to aid in the development of the sport and its practitioners.
How is this all going to look?
I have no definitive answer for this, the idea is to gather information on some of the potential injuries that will be seen in Ninja Warrior, and provide some prevention and recovery methods. Now, I am not a medical practitioner, and all of this information will be gathered from research literature; so before implementing any new exercises or treatments, ask your doctor or physical therapist about what you should do. Also, I will not be covering major injuries like fractures or full tears in muscles and tendons, but I can provide some research on recovery methods that come after the immediate treatment of those major injuries.
I will mostly be covering exercises and practices that can be done to prevent injury; that is where I feel most comfortable in my knowledge, and where I think there is a need for some information. This sport has a large population of young athletes, and has a high risk for overuse injuries. It is my hope that at least some athletes and coaches that are serious about competition and longevity in the sport may make use of this research to aid in their growth.
Where am I going with this?
The plan from here out is to collect and condense as much of the relevant research as I can into digestible articles and provide some actionable tools for prevention and recovery in Ninja Warrior. While this sport may seem outlandish and unique when compared to any other, most of its components and major movements can be traced back to other sports and activities. Also, the human body, so far as we’ve seen, can only move in certain ways, and many people have already found the most extreme ways to injure themselves. So, thanks to our predecessors in the domains of science, medicine, and extreme sports, we have a large bank of research to draw upon to help us safely proceed into what Ninja Warrior will have to offer.
Thanks for reading,
R. Andrew Paxton, B.S., M.S. Kinesiology
e: robertpaxton11@gmail.com
p: (615) 424-3239
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