Could You Survive a Football Tackle?

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It’s been a few days since the Super Bowl and although we’re all working to burn off the calories we ingested while watching athletes run around (ironic, isn’t it?) – my bet is that those players are still hurting.

Win or lose, these players have to deal with the aches and pains for many days, weeks or even years. It is amazing but I can actually see why these guys would consider performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs). They aren’t just used to make you stronger, they are MOSTLY used to speed up recovery.

Scenario:
You slip on ice, run too far, sleep wrong, break a bone, have a killer headache – you don’t even think about going to the gym until you heal or feel good again. What if your job, career and livelihood revolved around the ability of being able to get back in the gym and perform the most demanding fitness feats you’ve ever done THIS SUNDAY?! You might start to think about what your options were to make that happen.

Now this is starting to sound like I’m an advocate of PEDs. I’m not. I’m just saying look at what we expect of these PEOPLE, not machines, not animals, PEOPLE and how they might make the wrong decision on pain killers or speedy healing meds. Have you ever had a headache, ache or pain that was just eating away at you so that you couldn’t function? Wouldn’t you have taken ANY drug to make that pain go away? Suddenly, the perspective changes.

Take at look at this graph from Popular Mechanics – it shows the impact of a tackle compared to other jolting incidents.

We’ve all seen the hard-hitting players and winced as the guys crumble to the ground and then are escorted off the field. I find the ability to create this type of hit fascinating, as well as how their equipment is designed to protect them. I also find it amazing how we don’t allow these guys proper recovery time and encourage them to play with injury and “recover” in the off-season. Let me tell you, for a few million, I would happily workout with a stress fracture for a few months and then deal with it… as long as I could take pain-killers.

Additional football physics, NFL recovery and PED use found here:

Confess your PED use, give me your tackle survival story or just name your favorite pain killer in the comments below!

WithAmyMac.com

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